About

I try to write comedies but everyone always ends up crying.

Bio:
Jacob Marx Rice is a playwright and screenwriter based in Queens, New York. His play Chemistry recently opened at the Olivier-nominated Finborough Theatre, where The Guardian hailed it as “remarkable for its tender compassion” and The Stage called a “Moving, insightful love story… Rice has written a love story that treats heavy, complex subjects with confidence and compassion.” The play has also won the Excellence in Playwriting Award and FringeFAVE at the NY Fringe Festival, Producer's Pick at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and Producer’s Encore Pick at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Jacob’s film adaptation of the play was a semifinalist for the Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and is currently in development with the production company Anonymous Content.

Jacob’s plays have been produced and developed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The New Ohio, The Flea Theater, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. He has won the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Faculty Award from the NYU/Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing and a Sloan Foundation Screenwriting Grant. Jacob was the 2017 Playwright Observer at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. He also wrote the screenplay for See Through, a short film about a Deaf couple featuring Tony-nominated actor Lauren Ridloff (The Sound of Metal, Marvel’s Eternals), which has been featured at the Austin Film Festival, the Cannes’ Festival’s Short Film Corner, and film festivals across the United States.

Jacob studied Theater and Astrophysics at Columbia University and Dramatic Writing at NYU. He has been mentored by Suzan-Lori Parks, Ellen McLaughlin, James Shapiro and Oskar Eustis, who hired him as the Directing Observer on the Public Theater’s new production of A Bright Room Called Day. In addition to his writing, Jacob has worked as a dramaturg on numerous projects and specializes in building rigorous structures that enable complex play.