Photo by Joan Marcus
JACK PHILLIPS MOORE is a New York-based dramaturg, teacher and theater administrator with a focus on new play development, originally from the District of Columbia.
Jack works as the Associate Director of New Work Development at The Public Theater, where he has served the development of dozens of new plays and musicals over the last decade. At the Public, Jack also leads the Emerging Writers Group and other artist-focused programs. Projects Jack has helped develop have premiered at theaters across the country and have received numerous honors including Obie Awards, Tony Award nominations, the Princess Grace Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He has also dramaturged/consulted on new work for Arena Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, Colt Coeur, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Lark, Long Wharf Theatre, Ma-Yi Theater, New Dramatists, The Orchard Project, the Playwrights Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and WP Theater, to name a few.
Jack has taught courses in dramaturgy, theater history and administration at NYU, the Atlantic Theater School, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Tepper Semester at Syracuse University and has served as a juror/consultant for the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Leah Ryan Prize and the Kilroys, among many others. He is a graduate of New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
From my collaborators
“Amongst a crowded and often defeating NYC cultural landscape Jack has been the model of advocacy and enthusiasm for young writers. Since first meeting him, he has been a fierce champion and confidant as well as a wildly discerning reader.”
- Jeremy O. Harris, Tony-nominated playwright
“Over the last decade I have watched Jack Moore become one of the sharpest dramaturgical minds in the landscape of the American theater. He is passionate, knowledgeable and tremendously articulate. He has the generosity of spirit required to throw himself into the vision of a playwright, and the skills and heart to help a playwright fully realize that vision. He has integrity and depth: he brings to the theater beliefs and knowledge that range far beyond the world of the playhouse.”
- Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater
"A wonderfully generous, supportive, dedicated dramaturg and friend who goes above and beyond for others, always."
-Martyna Majok, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
“Jack Moore is not a dramaturg but rather a story architect. He walks around the rooms of unfinished plays, and with curiosity and virtuosity he tests the foundation of the stories construction. I've worked with him - he's a compass, he's a light on the path, but he's also a protector of new ideas, a guardian at the gate of creativity. I'm not sure if dramaturg encapsulates all that he brings to the creative process he is that and so much more.”
-Stevie Walker-Webb, Obie Award-winning director & Artistic Director, Baltimore Center Stage
“Every new play needs a radical co-conspirator of a dramaturg, someone who actively partners with the playwright to journey the depths of possibilities for a baby formation of a play and grow it into a work that challenges oppressive systems and its beneficiaries. He is exacting not only in the dramaturgy of story but is keen on the dramaturgy of language and the dramaturgy of healing as well.”
-Erika Dickerson-Despenza, playwright, winner of the 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
“Jack Moore is a generative artist's best friend and surest confidante. He is able to see each artist for their true self, and able to listen and ask questions that support the artist doing the deep, daring work to write the thing they most need to write. No one is a more joyful thought partner or greater advocate for playwrights.”
-Lear deBessonet, Tony nominee & Artistic Director, Encores!