Jay Stern directs and produces film and theater. Recent theater work includes a commercial run of The Bardy Bunch: the War of the Families Partridge and Brady in Chicago, The Latvia Project, co-created with Veronica Wigg, the world premiere of Alien Attack! created with Chang Nai Wen at Teatro Due in Rome, and the premiere of Gary Apple’s Hell is for Real at the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival.
Jay is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and a founder of the World Wide Lab, an international festival of director-driven work developed at the Watermill Center, which had its inaugural presentation in New York City in the summer of 2012. Jay was co-artistic director of the 2015 lab on the island of Syros in Greece.
Jay’s first feature film, an adaptation of Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, opened in New York City in May, 2007. His second feature, Spirit Cabinet, was completed in 2013, and his third feature, The Adventures of Paul and Marian, was completed in 2014. Jay has produced and directed over 30 short films which have played at festivals across the US and Canada, and produced Victor Varnado’s feature documentary The Awkward Comedy Show, which premiered on Comedy Central and is distributed on DVD by New Video.
Jay is also a founder, producer, and co-host of the Iron Mule Short Comedy Screening Series, which has been screening monthly since April, 2002.
Jay holds a degree in writing from Columbia University and an MA from the European Graduate School where he studied with Peter Greenaway, John Waters, Claude Lanzmann, Jacques Derrida, Agnes Varda and Volker Schlöndorff.