jessie bear: writer/playwright/producer
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click each image for more information...

PicturePhoto Credit Ryan Hall
Pool Play (This is Not A Theatre Company, 2014, revived 2017) 
Conceived and Directed by Erin B. Mee
Written by Charles L. Mee, Jessie Bear & Erin B. Mee
February - March, 2014: Waterside Plaza, New York City


Come sit at the edge of the pool with your feet in the water (yes! in the water!) and enjoy...
synchronized swimming, a race or two, penguins, songs, and an exploration of America's long, joyful and complicated relationship with water, swimming, and pools. 







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Versailles 2015 (This is Not A Theatre Company, 2015) 
Conceived and Directed by Erin B. Mee
Written by Charles L. Mee, Jessie Bear and Jonathan Matthews
October - November 2015, New York City
February 2016 (as Versailles 2016), Hastings-On-Hudson, NYC
February-March 2016 (as Versailles 2016), New York City

Type What Now (2015)
created, written, produced & performed by Jessie Bear
dir. Stefan Hartmann
Music by Stephen Bennett
Graphics by Sebastian Soler Moya
with Anne Flowers

What are ten things you hate about your body? What's one you like? An unlikely diagnosis takes Jessie on a journey exploring body image and chronic illness that questions what society tells us is healthy, and what healthy really means.
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Ferry Play (This Is Not A Theatre Company, 2015)
Conceived and Directed by Erin B. Mee
Written By Jessie Bear
Available for Download from the App Store and Google Play
Sound Design by Matthew Wilson

This Is Not A Theatre Company's Ferry Play invites audiences to participate in the site-specific, sensory experience of a podplay for the Staten Island Ferry.  Armed with nothing more than a set of headphones and an mp3 file, spectators ride the ferry while listening to the recorded production - every surrounding sight, smell, and sound plays a supporting role in the experience.  In a theater as big as the Upper New York Bay, ghosts from the ferry's past seduce and mingle with voices from its present, leaving the spectator to consider their role in the live performance event that is the Big Apple.  The result is a show that is personal and public, ever-changing, and as dynamic as New York City itself.  

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Readymade Cabaret (This Is Not A Theatre Company, 2015)
Conceived, Developed and Directed by Erin B. Mee
Written by Jessie Bear, Erin B. Mee, Kyla Ernst-Alper and Sam Silbiger
April 25 - May 28, 2015: Judson Church
February 22, 2015: Hotel New Work Open Workshop Production
December 2014: Private Performance

Readymade Cabaret, uses Duchamp's notions of chance and readymades to celebrate the beauty of chance encounters. The scenes that are performed, and the order in which they are performed, depend on the roll of the dice, so in any given performance the audience sees 1 of 39,916,800 possible plays. 

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Looks Like Everyone Has Left (Murmuration Theater, 2015) 
dir. M. Craig Getting 
Written by Jessie Bear
January 30-31, 2015: Philadelphia School of Circus Arts



When does being the only one left mean you’ve won, and when does it mean you’re just alone? When does playing pretend become pretending you’re too old to play? When is it time to finally sell your childhood shit?

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A Serious Banquet (This is Not A Theatre Company, 2014)
Conceived and Directed by Erin B. Mee
Text by Jessie Bear and Erin B. Mee with additional text by Guillaume Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Andre Salmon, Max Jacob, and Others
Devised by the Company
June 2014: Judson Church and New York Theatre Workshop


Part theatre, part performance art, part interactive painting wrapped up in one fabulous cubist dinner party. A Serious Banquet is a lush riff on a party Pablo Picasso threw for Henri Rousseau in 1908. 

Pictureposter credit: Sebastian Moya
Makeshift (Murmuration Theater Company, 2013)
Written by Jessie Bear
November 2013: Plays & Players Upstairs, Philadelphia
dir. M. Craig Getting

What happens to an idea, once created? 
What happens to a person, once lost? 
What happens when you can make anything you want appear?


What happens when you can't?


Pictureposter credit: Stefan Hartmann
little talks (2013) 
Written by Jessie Bear
May 2013: Staged Reading, Theater for the New City, NYC
dir. Eduardo Machado

The lives of dozens of people - some real, some fantastical - collide and intersect in an imaginative exploration - and explosion - of narrative. 

Pictureposter credit: Tasha Lewis
In Event of Moon Disaster (Telephone Bronco Theater Company, 2012) 
Written & Performed by Jessie Bear &  M. Sam Goodman
August 2012: The Red Room, NYC
January 2013: Dixon Place, NYC

1969. Two Americans, traveling abroad, try to reconcile the death of the Apollo 11 astronauts. 

Pictureposter credit: Emma Ferguson
  • Cartogoraphasia (Telephone Bronco Theater Company, 2010) 
  • Written & performed by Telephone Bronco Theater Company & Jessie Bear
  • September 2010: Circle of Hope (Philly Fringe Festival), Philadelphia 

This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. On stage. Or on paper. This is your brain on New Zealand Mean Time. Your brain on longitude. Your brain off.  Isn't this your brain? I swear it looks just like you. And haven't I seen you around here before?

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Preparations for Departure (Matchbox Theater Company, 2009) 
Written & Performed by Matchbox Theater Company & Jessie Bear
September 2009: Power Plant Productions (Philly Fringe Festival) Philadelphia

Matchbox Theater presents: euphoria, bike wheels, music for dancing, silence, an adventure, bodies, Philadelphia: Your Hometown, intimacy (or at least proximity), something beautiful, a second silence (this one lasting a long, long time), a story that you’ve already heard, wonder, and one small truth.

  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • ABOUT
  • PLAYS
  • PRESS
  • LINKS
    • TYPE WHAT NOW
    • THIS IS NOT A THEATRE COMPANY
    • MURMURATION THEATER
    • TELEPHONE BRONCO THEATER COMPANY
    • THEATER JUNKIE
  • CONTACT