About Me
Hi. My name’s Jesse.
I’m a screenwriter, playwright
and occasional actor from the Midwest.
Reading this should take less than a minute.
As a writer, I worked on the features films Float (Lionsgate) and Code 8: Part ll (Netflix), and I created and starred in the theater production King Gilgamesh (with Ahmed Moneka and his five-piece Arabic jazz band) which sold out runs in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Halifax and Toronto—where it won a Dora Award for Best Music and received four other nominations including Best New Play and Best Director for Seth Bockley.
Max Sennit, Demetri Petsalakis, Jesse LaVercombe, Waleed Abdulhamid, Ahmed Moneka, Jessica Deutsch, Selcuk Suna (out of frame on clarinet), King Gilgamesh, created by Ahmed Moneka, Jesse LaVercombe and Seth Bockley (The Jungle Theater, Minneapolis, 2023) photo credit: Bruce Silcox
As an actor, I won the Toronto ACTRA Award and received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for the Canadian horror film Violation (Sundance, TIFF, NYTimes Critics’ Pick), and I’ve performed in new plays across the U.S. and Canada by writers including Sarah Ruhl and Hannah Moscovitch.
Maev Beaty, Jesse LaVercombe, Letters from Max, by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Alan Dilworth (Necessary Angel / The Theatre Centre, Toronto, 2023) photo credit: Dahlia Katz
Neon text by Max Ritvo
Fun story: in my early 20s I lived, sailed and performed on a 98 ft. tall ship with a crew of singers, aerialists and assorted European and Canadian vagabonds. Together we toured Hacked, an electric-rock opera / circus show, from Florida to New York, using the boat as a stage, with the audience on the dock or shore. And once, we were kicked out of Portsmouth, Virginia by the mayor for, “Bringing the devil into his town.” That’s me in the photo below, behind the large mask, under the word “horror.”
Hacked, written directed by Paul Kirby, (Caravan Stage Company, Jacksonville, Florida, 2014)