Jared Mezzocchi is an 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 the Kennedy Center, the Geffen Playhouse, 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” (co-director & multimedia designer) 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 Jared his second OBIE. 
 
Most recently, Mezzocchi directed SANDRA at Theaterworks Hartford and was accepted, as a writer/performer, into the 2024 Colorado New Play Festival for his work "73 Seconds" directed by Aya Ogawa and commissioned by En Garde Arts. Currently, Jared is directing and co-creating THE WIND AND THE RAIN alongside playwright Sarah Gancher. This is a commission through Vineyard Theater and En Garde Arts and uses immersive design technology to bridge the past and present of Red Hook. Beginning at the Waterfront Barge Museum and ending at Sunny’s Bar, this site-specific theatrical experience invites audiences to situate themselves within the history of a neighborhood, a family, a storied gathering place, and the currents of time and nature that have shaped it all.
 
Mezzocchi is a two-time Macdowell Artist Fellow, a 2023 Helen Hayes Award winner, a 2012 Princess Grace Award winner, and is an Associate Professor at The University of Maryland, where he teaches in the MFA Design program for the projection and multimedia track, a curriculum he created in 2012.
 
Over the pandemic, Mezzocchi founded Virtual Design Collective (VIDCO), which has aided in the development of over 50 new digital works over the last 18 months. 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.