Program Director and Craig Noel Distinguished Professor, The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program
- BFA, The Juilliard School, Drama
Jesse Perez is an actor, director and choreographer/movement director who is currently the program director and Craig Noel Distinguished Professor at The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program. He recently directed the program’s Twelfth Night.
His choreography/movement credits include The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare & Company), Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare on the Sound), Steel Magnolias (Trinity Repertory Company), The Luckiest (La Jolla Playhouse), The Great Leap (Atlantic Theater Company), and Jedermann (Salzburg Festival). He has served as company choreographer for The Lake Lucille Chekhov Project since 2003. Perez has also been a guest artist and faculty member at The Juilliard School, where he has choreographed, directed, and taught for the last 12 years.
As an actor, he recently appeared in the Globe’s Romeo and Juliet directed by Barry Edelstein. His Off Broadway credits include Party People (The Public Theater), The Father and A Doll’s House (Theatre for a New Audience), Informed Consent (Primary Stages), Triple Happiness (Second Stage Theater), Barrio Grrrl! (Summer Play Festival), Recent Tragic Events (Playwrights Horizons), In the Penal Colony (Classic Stage Company), Up Against the Wind (New York Theatre Workshop).
His opera credits include Lucia di Lammermoor at The Metropolitan Opera, and his regional credits include La Jolla Playhouse, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Yale Repertory Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre Company, McCarter Theatre Center, and Goodman Theatre. He was also seen internationally with the Venice Biennale and Salzburg Festival. His television and film credits include “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “The Job,” “Life on Mars,” American Splendor, and Adopt a Highway.