mission
Jacob Sidney is a multi-disciplinary performer who creates live experiences for his local community, generating enriching shared memories to counterbalance the collective trauma of being human in America under late-stage capitalism.
biography
A classically trained baritone with deep experience in both experimental and traditional theatre and a strong background in dance, as a young man Sidney was fortunate to sing under maestros Seiji Ozawa and Michael Tilson Thomas as part of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. He now serves as Bass Section Leader and Soloist for the San Gabriel Valley Choral Company.
Attending Western Washington University intent on singing opera, Sidney would instead earn his first professional acting job in Bent in Portland, Oregon, later rejoining the director for The Normal Heart at ART. It was also during college that he discovered a love of experimental theatre, and upon graduating he moved to Seattle, appearing in several works from director Derek Horton (Cat-Like Tread, Pimpin). His roots in classical music continued, joining the Seattle Symphony Chorale for Carmina Burana.
Relocating to Los Angeles, Sidney’s genre-defying career continued with the dance-theatre ensemble Theatre Movement Bazaar, appearing in The Treatment (co-produced with the Theatre @ Boston Court) as well as playing Jekyll/Hyde in Model Behavior (<<<link). Musically he spent 2006-7 playing Patrick (“a soulful skinhead with a gorgeous singing voice,” nytheatre.com) in The Beastly Bombing (70+ performances in LA and NY, and LA Weekly’s Musical of the Year 2006), and sang and acted onstage with legendary rockers Sparks in their one-night performance of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman at the Ford Amphitheater.
Professional acting work in this period culminated in playing George in Of Mice and Men at North Coast Rep (“magnificently portrayed,” La Jolla Light), where he’d return as Holmes 1 in Jeffrey Hatcher’s Holmes & Watson. Earlier he played the titular mouse in Stuart Little and Capt. Swain in By the Great Horn Spoon for Laguna Playhouse. He also played non-biological human Julian in Uncanny Valley at ICT-Long Beach (“a tour de force,” LA Times). Additional roles included Horatio in Hamlet for director Jessica Kubzansky, and Guildenstern in Michael Michetti’s Hamlet at A Noise Within in Pasadena.
2021 brought a return to serious singing in Resonance Collective’s dance-opera Conference of the Birds, reviving at the Barclay Center in Irvine, CA, in January 2027.
Jacob Sidney has written (and performed) the full-length solo shows A Sweet Deal (from his novella detailing personal experience with the justice system) and No Better Man (the story of Seattle founder Doc Maynard). Ensemble dialogue works include the short plays The Ballad of Francisco, Tomorrow Unltd, Fran!, The Franco Files, and The Further Adventures of Francis Bigelow; and numerous editions of Fast’n’Loose, a 24-hour writing-to-performance experiment with Sacred Fools Theatre in Los Angeles. He and several friends wrote a comedic memoir on new fatherhood: Daddy Drinks from Post Hill Press.
Sidney launched his directing career with Hamlet Max, his own adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic with eight actors in a post-apocalyptic setting (playing the title role himself), beginning a long collaboration with animator Chris Hutchings providing projection design. Their partnership continued with the West Coast premieres of Rose and the Rime and Waiting for Waiting for Godot, both for Sacred Fools, as well as the world premieres In for a Penny and No Better Man in the Hollywood Fringe.
