Jess Lauricello
playwright, theatre director, actor
Plays I’ve Written
I write plays as an act of activism, because I am dissatisfied with the world and do not know how to make sense of it. I paint the world not how it ought to be, but magnifying everything it shouldn’t be. My hope is to be a dual citizen of the Theatre of the Political and the Theatre of the Absurd.
pictured fom left to right: Pedro Vierre, Zoe Mintz, Sam Alexander, Annabella Pritchard, Kristen Hoffman, Jake Levy, & Luis Feliciano.
Replaced!
Replaced! was originally self-produced at Teatro LATEA in the New York Theater Festival in 2023. In 2025, it was part of Blended City’s Reading Table Series.
Replaced! is a surrealist sci-fi tragicomedy following a young woman identified only as A Daughter who returns to her hometown to find that everyone in it has been replaced by aliens. Not knowing who’s real and who isn’t, she has to figure out how to live in this new world, and if she even wants to.
pictured from left to right: Padraig Bond & Samson MacDermot.
If I Did, You Deserved It
After selling out in the 2024 Queerly Festival at UNDER St Marks, If I Did, You Deserved It (dir. Casey Kelly) was dubbed Frigid New York’s June 2024 Show of the Month, and was given an encore performance. It was the first production mounted by Laurizarry, Lauricello’s theatre company she founded with Jaixa Irizarry and Pedro Vierre to make the next generation of weird theatre on a dime.
If I Did, You Deserved It is a dark absurdist comedy about a group of self-centered and self-serving billionaires who find themselves exactly where they belong: with each other. Each one is subjected to one-on-one meetings with the devil in order to plead their case to him that they don’t deserve to be damned.
As of 2025, the If I Did, You Deserved It pilot (dir. Ben Salazar), written by Jess Lauricello and Alexandra Spina and presented by Laurizarry, has been filmed, and is currently in post-production.
Plays I’ve Directed
The (Green Apple) Play by Padraig Bond @ UNDER St Marks (2024) “…fantastically staged… [with] great use of sound, from the crackling of flames or the stomping of the cast’s feet to the rhythm of the nightmares that the god conjures to his disembodied voice and beyond.” – Thinking Theatre
Replaced! by Jess Lauricello @ Teatro LATEA (2023)
Party Time by Harold Pinter @ Hunter College (2023)
Plays & Films I’ve Been In
Shakespeare in Yiddish (Scene from Romeo and Juliet) (dir. Jake Levy & Jennie Reich Litzky) @ UNDER St Marks, Hunter College, & The Idea Kitchen (2025)
Coyote Oughta Eat that Salesman! by Padraig Bond (dir. Luis Feliciano) @ UNDER St Marks (2025) “…there are also scenes of moving pathos, such as Lauricello doing a lot with silence and a slideshow as Crow feels the effects of Miasma,” – Thinking Theatre
A Breath to Above (dir. Pedro Vierre & Ben Salazar) – short film BTS (2025)
Ogallala by Padraig Bond (dir. Zoe Kay) @ UNDER St Marks (2024) “… Jess Lauricello … [is] funny” – Thinking Theatre
Oedipus (performed in Greek) adapted by Ellen McLaughlin (dir. Ianthe Demos) toured throughout Northern Greece, Ioannina, & Corinth (2024)
Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco (dir. Padraig Bond) @ Hunter College (2022)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (dir. Gregory Mosher) @ Hunter College (2022)
