Jeff Kaufman

About Jeff Kaufman

Jeff Kaufman directed, produced, and wrote the Emmy-nominated American Masters documentary about playwright Terrence McNally, EVERY ACT OF LIFE (with Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Nathan Lane, Audra McDonald, Chita Rivera, Billy Porter, Rita Moreno, Bryan Cranston, F. Murray Abraham, and others), and the Critics’ Choice-nominated documentary about Iranian human rights activist and political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh (narrated by Olivia Colman), NASRIN. Other films include THE STATE OF MARRIAGE (about the women who launched the marriage equality movement), and THE SAVOY KING: CHICK WEBB AND THE MUSIC THAT CHANGED AMERICA (about Harlem jazz and the discovery of Ella Fitzgerald, with John Legend, Janet Jackson, Tyne Daly, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum, and Billy Crystal), plus short documentaries with Time Magazine and Amnesty International.

Kaufman's play full-length FIRST AID won the 2024 Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival. His short play SENSELESS was a finalist in the 2024 Spectacular Tournament of Playwrights. Another short play, THE SPARK, was a winner of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights’ 2024 Play Festival.  His pilot script EDEN STREET (about the birth of Off-Broadway in early 1950s Greenwich Village) was a 2023 Scriptation finalist. His most recent play, LIFE, DEATH, AND OTHER OPPORTUNITIES, had a November 2024 staged reading presented by the Interact Theatre Company.

He also contributed cartoons to The New Yorker and illustrations to The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, he has written for The Washington Post, CNN International, and Ms. Magazine, he hosted an Associated Press Award-winning daily radio talk show in Vermont, and he has exhibited paintings in several Los Angeles galleries. In 2023, he organized a global women’s rights campaign about the mandatory hijab with Amnesty International, PEN America, RFK Human Rights, and The Feminist Majority Foundation, among others.

www.jeffkaufman.me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Kaufman

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