Karen
Schaeffer is a playwright and actress
in Des Moines, Iowa. Her plays include Girls’ Weekend, The Bachelorette Party (Girls’
Weekend 2), Choices! Choices!, Temporary Insanity, Recompense,
All the Gravities, Unpacking Mother and Head Voices, as
well as two co-written plays, Prolog and A Murder for Christmas.
Schaeffer’s work has been produced and/or developed in the United States, Canada,
Germany, Australia and Iceland. She received special recognition at the 2015 Cloris
Leachman Awards for Girls’ Weekend and is a winner of the 2022 Omaha Entertainment and Arts
Award for Outstanding Comedy for Temporary Insanity, the 2022 AACT NewPlayFest
for Unpacking Mother and Drake Theatre Arts’ inaugural Neighborhood Playwright
Series (2023) for Prolog. She is currently a member of the Dramatists Guild,
the American Association of Community Theatre and Theatre Communications Group.
