Jeremy Karafin founded Poetic Theater Productions in February 2010 and, as artistic director, has produced over 170 productions, showcases, gallery shows and readings including award winning productions of GOLIATH, faith, Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home, and Village Orpheus, and several critically acclaimed productions and premieres some of which include Dijla Wal Furat: Between The Tigris and the Euphrates, Paradox of the Urban Cliché, Underground, Foreign Bodies, BACK, Redbone: A Biomythography, and Taproot: Poetic Short Plays. Other programming includes the Veteran Voices 2017 Series, 9 art gallery shows, 2 years of Conscious Language workshops and panels and 7 years of Poetic License festivals of new poetic theater which has featured world premiere productions, readings, and showcases focused on new poetic theater by veterans, youth, and LGBTQ artists.
On the west coast, Jeremy founded and produced the first three seasons of the Kinetic Poetics Project, an annual spoken word and poetry festival now in its sixteenth season. He was the Assistant Director of Student Media and Television Broadcast Adviser at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he received the Chancellor’s Award for his thesis work with the Kinetic Poetics Project.
Jeremy produced a web-video in support of gay marriage with Alan Cumming and associate produced the Off-Broadway Production of No Place Called Home. For more than five years Jeremy was the Venue Operations Manager at the Wild Project in the East Village where he supporting 130 productions, concerts, showcases, readings, and gallery shows annually.
As a director, he has directed work by Danny Rocco, David Davila, Darren Blaney, Kristina Goodnight, Timothy DuWhite, Mickey Bolmer, Teniece Divya Johnson, and Diana Son as well as two of J. Julian Christopher’s plays including the award winning rock musical ¡Oso Fabuloso and the Bear Backs! and the 2018 production of Ted Bacino & Rufus Cadigan’s The Shakespeare Conspiracy at Theatre Row that was hailed by Theater Pizzaz as a “must-see” production with “superb direction”.
Photo by Hunter Canning