Nick Jones is a performer and writer for theater, television, and film. He is the author of the critically acclaimed play Trevor, about a has-been show chimp and the woman who loves him. The Los Angeles Premiere of Trevor, starring Jimmi Simpson and Laurie Metcalf, won the 2015 Ovation Award for Playwriting, as well as the LA Drama Critics Circle Award. Prior to this, Nick premiered 2 plays at Lincoln Center/LCT3: Vérité, starring Anna Camp; and The Coward, with Jeremy Strong and Kristen Schaal, which was nominated for 4 Lortel Awards (winning 2). His show Jollyship the Whiz-Bang at Ars Nova, a puppet rock musical about pirates in which he also starred as a performer, premiered at Ars Nova in 2008, was subsequently revived for the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater, and was nominated by the Jim Henson Foundation for a 2011-2012 Mid Atlantic Touring grant as part of their “American Masterpieces” series.
Other plays include: Important Hats of the Twentieth Century (Manhattan Theater Club); Salomé of the Moon (Waterwell/PPAS); The Wundelsteipen (the Flea); Little Building (Galapagos); Straight Up Vampire: A History of Vampires in Colonial Pennsylvania as Performed to the Music of Paula Abdul (Philly Fringe Festival, Joe’s Pub); Canada’s Mid-Riff (chashama); Rockberry: The Last One Man Show (The Brick); The Nosemaker’s Apprentice (The Brick, with Rachel Shukert); The Sporting Life (Studio 42 at the Vineyard, Theater, also with Shukert); and The Colonists, a puppet work for children (The Brick; “Best Puppet Show,” L Magazine, 2009).
Nick was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He earned his Literature/Creative Writing BA from Bard College and a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting degree from Juilliard, where he was a two-time winner of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize. He has received theater commissions from Lincoln Center, Ars Nova, The Old Globe, Manhattan Theater Club, The Huntington, Center Theater Group, and South Coast Rep. Other honors include: Best of New York 2008 (L Magazine and Gothamist, for Jollyship), Best Music Video (Coney Island Film Festival, 2007), nomination for Best Show at the Dublin Fringe Festival. Grants from the Jim Henson Foundation and the Dramatists Guild, and a MacDowell Fellowship. He and partner Raja Azar were deemed “Best Grown Men Who Still Play With Dolls” by the Village Voice in 2009. Nick was the first playwright-in-residence at the Stonybrook Writer’s Conference in 2009, and is an inaugural member in the Ars Nova Play Group. He has also developed work at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony, the Patravadi Theater in Bangkok, and the 2004 Dream Festival in Taipei.
Nick currently works as a writer and producer for the Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black”, the recipient of numerous accolades, including Emmy, Golden Globe and Writer’s Guild nominations, the Peabody Award, and more.
Nick Jones