Biography

Jared Scheib is a director and artist-entrepreneur born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He earned his B.A. from the University of Southern California, where he studied film production in the School of Cinematic Arts and neuroscience as an inaugural member of the Brain and Creativity Institute.

After graduating in mid-2008, Jared directed, produced, shot, and edited his first feature documentary film, The Mayor, a 68-minute crowd-pleaser about the love lives of a handful of vivacious seniors, including an 88-year-old tailchaser, an adoring widow, and a raunchy gossip queen, living it up in a retirement community in Texas. The film gained official selection for its world premiere in May 2011 at Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival (DocAviv) in Israel and was licensed for Israeli TV on Channel 8. It had its North American premiere on its home turf at Lone Star International Film Festival later that year, where it was lauded by DFW.com as the "most affecting film" of the festival and by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as "a true discovery". In 2012, the film continued to compete at Documentary Edge Festival in New Zealand and at Little Rock Film Festival in Arkansas, where it was nominated for Best Documentary and received an honorable mention in consideration for Best Southern Film from Oxford American, which called The Mayor "one of those lucky few [docs] that, once viewed, sticks in the mind like only the deepest, truest art can." In September of that year, the film had its hometown premiere as part of Dallas VideoFest 25 at the Dallas Museum of Art. The Mayor continues to play at festivals, film societies, retirement communities, museums, universities, and homes, with Jared managing its distribution.

The Mayor was inspired in part by Jared's experience co-directing his 2008 short-subject documentary, Life's Waltz, which was selected in April 2010 by an industry jury as a Fotokem Award Finalist (top 6 USC films of that year) to play at First Look Film Festival at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood. The film was licensed for online distribution by SnagFilms and for Texas TV by PBS.

In January 2012, Jared won the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science's social media contest with his commercial, Do You Believe in a Secular America? He has continued to work in both documentary and fiction around the themes of human connections, love, nostalgia, science, skepticism, and secularism.

Jared also develops and directs original content for the stage, having premiered in August 2011 his first play, Wrestles With Machista, a 75-minute, one-man, autobiographical show written and performed by Alon Lagstein and produced by Debra Ehrhardt about a Jewish boy who struggles to become a man under the pressure of his family heritage. In its brief five-show run, it sold out multiple times and earned Goldstar's "Roar of the Crowd" honor, reserved for the highest member-rated show in Los Angeles.

On the heels of this success, Jared was asked to develop and direct two more original, one-person autobiographical plays, which are both slated to premiere by the beginning of 2013. He is writing his own full-length solo show as well about learning touch, affection, and love.

Jared believes that content is king, and to that end he imbues his works with tenderness, subtlety, and intensity, striving to emphasize what makes art meaningful: honest emotion.