“Jeff Raz handles all the text (in La Bete) splendidly and adds a whole bag of other tricks… he is utterly irresistible.”
~ San Jose Mercury News

Acting Credits (Partial List)

    • Performed on Broadway in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, that was also broadcast nationally on the prestigious PBS series “Live From Lincoln Center”.
    • Starred in television commercials running nationally and regionally.
    • Starred in Mid-Summer Night’s Dream at the Marin Shakespeare Festival, which won the Bay Area Critics Circle award for Best Play of the Year 1994.
    • Won a Canada Council Distinguished Foreign Artist grant for his work with the Caravan Stage Company.
    • Performed in theaters and festivals in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan, including (partial list)
      • Berkeley Repertory Theater
      • The Kennedy Center (D.C.)
      • The Goodman Theater (Chicago)
      • The Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis)
      • Komatsu Theater (Japan)
      • L.A. Olympic Arts Festival
      • The International Street Performers Festival (Canada), S.F.
      • an Francisco Shakespeare Festival
      • Marin Theater Company
      • The Magic Theater, S.F.
      • SoloMio Festival and many others.

Jeff Raz is a member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG/AFTRA).

Director

“The circus acts (in Make*A*Circus) are so neatly wrapped within a simple tale that you barely notice where one leaves off and the other begins, thanks in large part to Jeff Raz’s sure-handed, smoothly flowing direction.”
~ Rob Hurwitt

“(Snake in the Basement) is pure theater: responding to the sparest suggestions, we create the piece finally in our own imaginations. Director Jeff Raz maintains a playful but appropriately uneasy tone throughout, and Wetzel and her ensemble produce a compelling world with seamless precision.”
~ The Bay Guardian

Jeff has directed for the Goldie Award winning puppeteer Liebe Wetzel’s Lunitique Fantastique, Tim Barsky’s The Bright River, Carnival with SF ArtsEd, a site specific piece in Alameda called Island City Waterways as well as circus adaptations of the Chinese epic Journey to the West, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Marc Chagall’s paintings (with Joanna Haigood).

He directed Bracebridge Dinner at Yosemite Park for two years as well as numerous other shows for professional companies and conservatory programs including Make*A*Circus, The New Pickle Circus, the Rose Ensemble, Dell’Arte International, Urban High School, School of the Arts and the California Theater Conservatory.

Jeff is featured in the following books:

‘Tantalizing Alice’ Approaches, Concepts and Case-Studies in Adaptations of a Classic
Edited by Sissy Health and Nadia Butt, WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2016

Shakespeare in Performance
Edited by Eric C. Brown and Estelle Rivier, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013

Doyle Ott references Jeff a number of times in his excellent essay “Fitting the Globe in the Ring: Circus in Shakespearian Performance”

Rekindling The Flame: The Many Paths to a Vibrant Judaism
by Sam Osherson, Harcourt 2001

Jeff’s work with Jewish themes, as a playwright, teacher and actor, are featured in two sections.

The Pickle Clowns: New American Circus Comedy
by Joel Schechter, Southern Illinois University Press 2001

Interviews with many Pickle clowns, including Jeff, his long time partner Diane Wasnak and director Tandy Beal.