Jared Mezzocchi is a two-time Obie Award-winning theater artist, working as a director, multimedia designer, playwright, and actor. Based out of New York, Mezzocchi’s work has appeared at notable theaters nationwide, including Geffen Playhouse, Vineyard Theater, The Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, TheatreWorks Hartford, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth (company member), and many more. In 2016, he received the Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Award for his work in Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at the Manhattan Theatre club. In 2020, the New York Times spotlighted his multimedia innovations alongside the pandemic work of four other theater artists, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Paula Vogel. His work on Sarah Gancher’s digital production of Russian Troll Farm was also celebrated as a New York Times critic pick, and praised for being one of the first digitally native successes for virtual theater. In 2023, this digital production of Russian Troll Farm won Mezzocchi his second Obie. Most recently, Mezzocchi directed The Wind and The Rain: a Story about Sunny’s Bar at En Garde Arts and Vineyard Theater which was performed on a barge in NYC and called “Highbrow Brilliant” by New York Magazine. In Spring 2024, Mezzocchi directed Sandra at TheaterWorks Hartford. As a playwright/performer, he was recently accepted into the 2024 Colorado New Play Festival for his work 73 Seconds directed by Aya Ogawa and commissioned by En Garde Arts. 

 

Mezzocchi is a two-time MacDowell Artist Fellow, a 2012 Princess Grace Award winner, and recently celebrated his retirement at The University of Maryland, where he taught in the MFA Design program for the projection and multimedia track, a curriculum he created in 2012 that graduated 17 MFA students in Multimedia Design. 

 

Over the pandemic, Mezzocchi founded Virtual Design Collective (VIDCO), which has aided in the development of over 50 new digital works over the 18 months of quarantine. This year, he is finishing his book, A Multimedia Designer’s Method to Theatrical Storytelling, which will be published through Routledge. Mezzocchi has a BA in theater and film from Fairfield University, and an MFA in performance and interactive media arts from Brooklyn College.