Jesse Cameron Alick is a dramaturg, producer, poet, playwright, essayist, artistic researcher and science fiction expert.
Born and raised Buddhist high in the mountains of Montana, Jesse is a first generation American born of Grenadian descent. He moved to New York City at 17, began working as a spotlight operator and over the course of his first three years in the city worked for a myriad of off off broadway companies doing everything from working as a box office manager, to lighting board op, to program folder, back stage crew, theater rental manager, and hip hop poetry teacher. Jesse co-founded the Subjective Theater Company at 19, moved on to become the company’s first resident playwright and then took the helm as Producer and Artistic Director. Jesse ran Subjective for 10 years and staged 15 full productions around Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Formerly, Jesse was the Company Dramaturg at the Public Theater where he planned bespoke development paths for projects, from acorn to oak, managing commissioning program with over 20 ongoing projects, readings and workshops, production dramaturg, the Emerging Writers Group and Public Lab/Public Studio - following that he was the Associate Artistic Director of the Vineyard Theater, working in dramaturgy and artistic producing. Jesse is currently a Co-Director at HERE Art Center in downtown Manhattan, working in a shared leadership model.
Jesse is an active freelance dramaturg at various off-Broadway theaters in the city, nationwide and in the UK, as well as a regular artistic consultant for the Sundance Institute. Jesse studied writing with Adrienne Kennedy and has lectured, taught theater courses, been a graduate responder and/or mentored students at a myriad of programs including Columbia, Fordham, Syracuse, Lewis and Clark, UT Austin, Primary Stages, Yale and Vasser. He currently teaches at NYU.
Jesse’s field wide artistic research project EMERGING FROM THE CAVE, is an independent study commissioned by Sundance Institute on the future of theater and live performance. In 2021 the project became the basis for a nation wide conference by Theater Communications Group, where Jesse was the lead curator and speaker. Jesse has been invited to lecture and lead workshops about the study in places all the way from the Kampala International Theatre Festival in Uganda, to the Freiraum Pan-European Arts Festival, to private meeting of senior leadership and board of directors of various institutions. Read the study at www.emergingfromthecave.org
