My name’s Jesse.

I’m a writer and occasional actor based in Toronto.

I write movies, musicals, and plays and collaborate often on other narrative projects.

Reading everything below should take less than a minute.

Ahmed Moneka and I co-wrote the story / book for the new stage musical with the catalogue of the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, directed by Mary-Francis Moore and produced by Michael Rubinoff (Come From Away).

Ahmed and I also co-created (w/ Seth Bockley and Ahmed’s Arabic jazz band) the theatre production King Gilgamesh which ran in Chicago, Minneapolis, NYC, Halifax and twice at Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto.

l also wrote on Code 8: Part ll, which hit #1 in 71 countries on Netflix.

As an actor, I won the Toronto ACTRA Award and was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for the horror film Violation (Sundance, TIFF, NYTimes Critics’ Pick). I also spent four seasons on Murdoch Mysteries, and have acted in new many plays by writers including Sarah Ruhl and Hannah Moscovitch.

When I was twenty-two, I performed in Hacked, a rock opera / circus show, on a 98 ft. tall ship with a crew of mostly European sailors, singers and aerialists. We played to audiences from Florida to New York, using the ship’s deck as a stage. Once we were kicked out of Portsmouth, Virginia by the mayor for, “bringing the devil into his town.” In the photo below, behind the large mask, and under the word “horror,” that me.

Let me know if you’d like to connect.

Or if you’d like me to bring the devil into your town.

Here are a few photos by Dahlia Katz: