Jake moved to New York at eighteen to attend Marymount Manhattan College.  He graduated with Magna Cum Laude with a BFA in Acting and Directing, and was awarded the prestigious Gold Crest Award of Excellence for both academic and creative rigor. 

After graduation, Jake spent several years apprenticing as both a Stage Manager and Assistant Director.  He assisted Garry Hynes on the Broadway production of Sixteen Wounded, and moved with her to the Kennedy Center where he worked closely on Streetcar Named Desire, starring Patricia Clarkson and Amy Ryan.  He has assisted at the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival (Clinton Turner Davis, Pure Confidence), Williamstown Theatre Festival (Rob Roth, The Opposite of Sex), Wooly Mammoth (Chay Yew, Antebellum) and apprenticed with such great artists as Tina Landau, Ed Berkley, and Nobel Prize Winner Derek Walcott.

For three years, Jake served as the Artistic Associate/Literary Manager of Obie-Award winning Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre.  While there, he worked closely with many writers, and gained great insight into the inner workings of an Off-Broadway Theatre.  During his time there he led a group of readers, responsible for reading the some 600 open submissions the theatre received each year.  He also helped to form the “Dirty Works” series, which allowed young writers the chance for their work to be seen in a festival, with critical feedback from some of the industry’s top critics. 

Upon his departure from Rattlestick, he helped form the Internationalists which today serves as his creative bedrock.  Working primarily in new work, his belief that theatre should never leave an audience without having experienced some form of ‘extreme emotion’ has led him to delve deeply into psychologically provocative and viscerally challenging material.  With the Internationalists he has produced and directed shows in New York, with collaborations from Berlin, Osaka, Munich, Bucharest, Rio, London, Amsterdam and Mexico City. 

He has also directed premiere work by writers such as Adam Rapp (Bingo with the Indians, Williamstown), Eric Pfeffinger (Tiny Baby, Actors Theatre of Louisville), Eric Sanders (Hollow Hallow, The Brick), as well as on new translations by Alexandra Dixon and Michi Yamamura.  His work has been seen in New York at the Public Theatre, The Tank, Brick, Gene Frankel, and many others.

Jake believes deeply in the power of theatre and art, and thru his work he hopes to explore the impact of technology and globalisation thru dramatic means.  Theatre should in no way be a didactic medium-- but it should be a changing medium.  Please come see the work, and be changed for yourself!