The Founder

Ayvaunn Penn BA, MA, MFA

Stethoscope Stage Founder & Artistic Director

Ayvaunn Penn (Columbia University Playwriting Dean’s Fellow) is a playwright-director and lyricist-composer passionate about nurturing the next generation of theatre artists. She is an assistant professor within the Texas Christian University Theatre Department and is best known for her work in applied theatre, community-engaged theatre, and theatre for social change.

Her play For Bo has garnered national honor as a  Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 2020 and 2021 Finalist. After adapting this stage play into a community-illustrated screenplay, the film adaptation of For Bo was selected for the following national film festivals: Silicon Valley African Film Festival (Honorable Mention) in California, Gary International Black Film Festival in Indiana, and Lone Star Film Festival (Special Screening at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) in Texas. By invitation, For Bo has also been screened internationally.

Another of Penn’s community-centric plays, For the Love of Uvalde, made the 2024 Yale Drama Series Short List (top 10 from 2,000+ international submissions) and holds the title of semi-finalist for the prestigious Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship. By invitation, For the Love of Uvalde, resides in the Robb Archives Collection housed at El Progreso Memorial Library in Uvalde, Texas. Both For Bo and For the Love of Uvalde hold the title of semi-finalist for The Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellows Program. Hence, Stethoscope Stage is not Penn’s first theatrical enterprise designed to harness the power of theatre to address contemporary social issues.

THE INSPIRATION FOR STETHOSCOPE STAGE

Penn was inspired to launch Stethoscope Stage in the summer of 2021 when the national conversation around the danger of vaccine misinformation was at a notable high. With medical professionals and national leaders voicing concern for people seeking and acquiring vaccine information from unreliable resources, Penn decided it was time to use the power of theatre to facilitate open, honest, factual conversations about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination. In this moment, Stethoscope Stage was born.

It is Penn’s vision that over the coming years this national play festival will highlight other key subject matter within health care and continue to act as a bridge of understanding, empathy, and compassion between medical professionals and members of the general public.