JasmineRochelleGoodspeed - About Me

I am a Nipmuc, two spirit, story weaver and theater maker. I consider myself very lucky that I was able to grow up surrounded by my Indigenous culture, and seek to bring that sense of community with me wherever I go. Both of my parents were involved in the music scene when I was a child. My mother was a karaoke DJ, and my father(Billy Goodspeed) has always been a singer. I was called to the stage by my birth, and theater is what made the world make sense to me. From falling in love with Shakespeare‘s Romeo & Juliet at age 9, to studying theaters ties to ritual and ceremony now, I have a great passion for the human spirit and the ways that we have always moved through this world.

For me, theater is like breathing. I breathe in the spirit of those who came before me, and I dream with them. This work in the performing arts and storytelling feels vital to life, and I want to share that as much as I can with as many people as I am able to be with. 

I have always been a writer. I completed books for my own enjoyment at ages 8, 11, 13, and 16, moving from there to essay writing and plays. My first endeavor into playwrighting(well, aside from the one I wrote in place of an essay in 9th grade) was a musical titled 1675. This musical was about the tragedy of Deer Island and King Philip‘s War here in Massachusetts in 1675. I wanted to tell this story because it felt important to share a buried truth to a large mass. I didn’t think enough people knew about Deer Island and the hundreds of Nipmuc, Wampanoag, Massachusett, and sister nations who happened to have foolishly put their trust in the Praying Towns created by Johnathan Elliot, who were sent there for 9 months to die. The story still riles me up. My friend Atticus and I spent about 2 years creating the draft that would go up at Umass Amherst in 2018.
During this time (2014-2019), I had also established a free Shakespeare in the Park at Look Park under the troupe name “Billy Shakes Free Shakespeare.”  By 2019, I was working at and with Double Edge Theater as a Grant Fellow, and working to establish Ohketeau Cultural Center out in Ashfield. Alongside this, I attended meetings with the Massachusetts Assembly from the BARR Foundation and advocated for the funding of the Native Youth Empowerment Foundation.
2020-2022 involved the emergence of various online art opportunities such as working with Safe Harbors on pandemic pieces, and a song for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. During this time, I also grew a following on Tiktok under the name @Starlenia and created story-type programming with other popular creators. It was during this time that I found myself aiding in the creation of the Avatar the Last Airbender Musical. My work was mainly dramaturgical and logistical, arranging meetings and wondering how we might produce the musical with the proper approval. Ultimately, our mission became to prove that it could be done, and with an all Indigenous and Asian cast.
2022  brought me into the world of teaching theater, something that I found I was quite good at and was swiftly developing a method for. I have directed shows with the performing arts school I work at(PVPA), and in my spare time worked on new works and recently was a featured playwright in the Historic Northampton commission with Plays in Place. My play was about Reverend Johnathan Edwards, and one of the women who was enslaved to him—“Rose”— the namesake of the play.
I continue to write in my spare time, and direct as I am called to it.