Education
MFA, University of Virginia
BS, Emerson College
Jan enjoys developing new work as an actor and director, and has directed world premieres with Ensemble Studio Theatre (Theatre Lab Member), The Women’s Project (Director’s Forum Member), Rattlestick (Artistic Associate), and New Georges (Affiliated Artist and Roaring Girl).
She is an Affiliated Artist with Hartford’s Capital Classics Theatre Company where she directed Athol Fugard’s Victory for their inaugural Contemporary Classics Conversations program on social justice. She is also Associate Artistic Director of Connecticut Lyric Opera. Productions include: La Boheme, The Marriage of Figaro, and most recently, Die Fledermaus at the Bushnell Performing Arts Center.
Jan’s writing appears in the annual “Season In Review” section of New England Theatre Journal, where she has reviewed Trinity Rep and Hartford Stage. During the pandemic Jan turned her hand to creative writing and her work is available on New Play Exchange. She has taken several playwriting workshops and studied screenwriting with Sundance and UCLA. In 2023 her play Lost & Found was featured in a festival of short plays in Vermont. Her play Jack & Jill was published in the June ’23 inaugural edition of Mini Plays Magazine and in the July ’23 edition of Literature Today. Jan is currently a member of Wild Geese Writers, a national, award-winning group of playwrights. She teaches playwriting at Hartford Stage.
Since 2006 Jan has taught theatre in schools across Connecticut. In 2020 she won the Excellence in Teaching Award at CCSU where the faculty adjudicators attended Jan’s Improvisation class and wrote: “Her students were engaged and enthusiastic, taking responsibility for their own learning. Her style was encouraging and motivating. Her class was akin to sitting in a concert hall watching a maestro coax excellence from a great philharmonic orchestra.”
Jan has studied with Harold Bloom (Yale), Emanuelle Delpech (Pig Iron), Anna Halprin, Barney O’Hanlon (SITI), Tina Packer and Dennis Krausnick (Shakespeare & Co), Sam Pinkleton, Polly Teale (Shared Experience), and Pilobolus. She has assisted directors Seret Scott, Rob Bundy and Carlo Questa. Jan is a graduate of Punahou School in Hawaii, where she was born and raised. www.janmason.net
Interest Areas
- New Play Development
- Theatre for Social Justice
- Playwriting & Screenwriting
- Director Training
- Directing Opera
- Bertolt Brecht