Biography

Jason Chaet is a multiple award winning filmmaker, theatre director, producer, editor and acting teacher based in New York City. He got his start at the Ensemble Studio Theatre where he worked with off-broadway icon Curt Dempster. In his time at the Ensemble Studio Theater, he developed the new work of many playwrights, including working with David Mamet and Arthur Miller, and served as assistant director on Mamet's critically-acclaimed No One Will Be Immune: Five Pieces for Theater and Miller's Elegy for a Lady. He also ran the Artistic Director's Lab at the Ensemble Studio Theatre summer conference for two seasons.

He created and directed Off the Page for HBO/USCAF and has a vast array of theater directing credits in NYC and around the country. He also founded and was the artistic director of Stage One, an Off-Off Broadway theater company that specialized in producing new and under-performed one-act plays.

Jason moved into the world of independent film when he directed the N.Y. and L.A. workshops, then served as creative consultant on the award-winning independent film Kissing Jessica Stein which was distributed by Fox Searchlight. His feature film Putzel (starring Jack Carpenter, Melanie Lynskey, Susie Essman, and John Pankow) won multiple awards, appeared in over fifty film festivals around the world, and was distributed internationally by Filmbuff.

Other film and television credits include Remember (produced in association with the Puerto Rican film commission) and Avenues (TV Pilot). He also co-created, directed, produced and edited the short socio-political web series Just Words.

His most recent feature film Seneca, which he directed, co-wrote (with longtime collaborator Armando Riesco), edited and produced had it's world premiere at the HBO NY Latino Film Festival in August of 2019 at AMC 42nd in New York City, where it won a Special Jury Prize. It went on to play at many film festivals around the country, winning multiple awards including the prestigious Ultra Indie Feature Prize at the Woodstock Film Festival and Best Picture and Best Director at the Phoenix Film Festival. The film stars Armando Riesco, Susan Misner, Shirley Rumierk, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Tony Plana. It was shot on location in New York City and Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Seneca ran exclusively on HBO and HBO Max for two years, and is now available for rental or purchase on all major platforms.

Current feature films in development include Meri Crismas (co-writer, producer and director), Sifu (director and story development) and I Ruin Everything (co-writer and director).

Jason is proud to be a long time member of the acting faculty at AMDA (American Musical Dramatic Academy) in New York City, where for years he served as the Supervisor of First Semester Acting, and now serves as Chair of the Camera Division and Head of the Camera Program.

- IMDb mini biography by: Jason Chaet