{{Short description|American writer (born 1971)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=May 2025}} {{for|the American bishop|Jason Grote (bishop)}} {{Infobox writer | name = Jason Grote | image = File:Jason Grote 2005 brightened.jpg | image_size = | alt = Headshot of a man with curly hair. | caption = Grote in 2005 | birth_date = | birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | occupation = Playwright, screenwriter | education = New York University (MFA) | period = | genre = Surrealism, satire | subject = | movement = | notable_works = ''1001'', ''Maria/Stuart'', ''Civilization (all you can eat)'', "The Crash", ''Rogue'', ''Knightfall'' | spouse = Lorraine Martindale | children = | relatives = | awards = | years_active = | module = | website = }} '''Jason Grote''' (born 1971)<ref name="x">{{cite web | title=Jason Grote | website=X (formerly Twitter) | url=https://x.com/jasongrote | access-date=May 8, 2025}}</ref> is an American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote a series of plays in the 2000s that were known for addressing contemporary themes in the context of classic literature with multilayered stories jumping back and forth between fantastic and realistic scenes. In the 2010s, Grote became a television writer with credits on ''Smash'', ''Mad Men'', ''Rogue'' and ''Knightfall'', as well as the video game series ''BioShock''.
==Early life and education== Grote was born in Lakewood Township, New Jersey and raised in a working-class family.<ref name="Horwitz">{{cite web |last1=Horwitz |first1=Andy |title=Five Questions for Jason Grote |url=https://www.culturebot.org/2009/06/7119/five-questions-for-jason-grote/ |website=Culturebot |date=June 15, 2009 |access-date=April 8, 2025}}</ref><ref name="PF-interview">{{cite web |title=Interview with Jason Grote |url=https://playwrightsfoundation.org/2007/03/15/interview-with-jason-grote/ |publisher=Playwrights Foundation |access-date=April 8, 2025 |date=March 15, 2007}}</ref> He studied theater at Montclair State University, where he took a playwriting class, then moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1997.<ref name="Horwitz" /><ref name="Oculus">{{cite web |title='The Oculus' Interview: Jason Grote |url=https://blurst-of-times.medium.com/the-oculus-interview-jason-grote-c4b3364e6720 |website=The Blurst of Times |publisher=Medium |access-date=April 8, 2025 |date=July 9, 2023}}</ref><ref name="a004">{{cite web|title=Spotlight on Alums Spring 2010|website=Montclair State University|date=March 15, 2010|url=https://www.montclair.edu/arts/2010/03/15/5234_spotlight-on-alums-spring-2010/|access-date=May 9, 2025}}</ref> After a few years of acting, writing and directing in New York—including having a play performed at the New York International Fringe Festival—Grote enrolled in the master of fine arts program at New York University, graduating in 2003.<ref name="Oculus" /><ref name="Crain's">{{cite news |last1=Marshall |first1=Samantha |title=M.F.A. now, pay later |url=https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20080615/SUB/978257329/m-f-a-now-pay-later |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= Crain's New York Business}}</ref>
==Playwriting career== Grote's early plays included ''The New Jersey Book of the Dead'';<ref name="NJBookofDead - Indiana" /> ''Box Americana'', a play about Walmart that includes a "chatty phantom named Sam, who happens to be the spirit of late capitalism";<ref name="M/S - WaPo" /> and ''This Storm Is What We Call Progress'', a Kabbalah-themed story that premiered at the Washington's Rorschach Theatre in 2008.<ref name="WaPo - This Storm" /> During his playwriting career, Grote has had residencies with New Dramatists and at Yaddo.<ref name="ND">{{cite web |last1=Child |title=Jason Grote |url=https://newdramatists.org/jason-grote |publisher=New Dramatists |access-date=April 8, 2025}}</ref><ref name="LAT - Martindale">{{cite news |last1=Kachka |first1=Boris |title=Meet the Writers: A movable feast of locals and transplants, with big books on the menu |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-04-14/meet-charles-finch-and-steph-cha-writers-lunch-club |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= Los Angeles Times |date=April 14, 2022}}</ref> He received a commission from the theater collective Radiohole to write the text for their performance ''Tarzana''.<ref name="x053">{{cite web | last=Tran | first=Diep | title=Radiohole Returns to Gooey Form With 'Tarzana' | website=AMERICAN THEATRE | date=July 21, 2015 | url=https://www.americantheatre.org/2015/07/21/radiohole-returns-to-gooey-form-with-tarzana/ | access-date=May 10, 2025}}</ref>
===''1001''=== Grote's first major success was ''1001'', a play inspired by the ''One Thousand and One Nights''. ''1001'' premiered at the Denver Center Theater in 2007<ref name="1001-Premiere" /> and later that year played at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York. The play jumps back and forth between the setting of the stories with the central character Scheherazade, who morphs into Dahna, a New York-based Palestinian grad student, while Scheherazade's violent husband Shahriyar morphs into Dahna's Jewish boyfriend, Alan. The layered plot includes stories within the story that involve Gustave Flaubert and Jorge Luis Borges.
According to ''The New York Times'', the play was "often heavy-handed" but praised its "dynamic storytelling [for] spin[ning] us over the rough spots."<ref name="NYT - 1001">{{cite news |last1=James |first1=Caryn |title=Stories of Arabian Nights and a Dystopian New York |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/theater/reviews/01baru.html |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= The New York Times |date=November 1, 2008}}</ref> The play won an Ovation Award from The Denver Post.<ref name="d577">{{cite web | last=Sierra | first=Gabrielle | title=Colorado New Play Summit Announces 2010 Readings | website=BroadwayWorld.com | date=December 8, 2009 | url=https://www.broadwayworld.com/denver/article/Colorado-New-Play-Summit-Announces-2010-Readings-20091208 | access-date=May 8, 2025}}</ref> Grote adapted ''1001'' into a musical, with music by Marisa Michelson, which debuted off-Broadway in 2018. ''The New York Times'' said the show was "at its best when it flat-out mocks American ignorance and the stubbornness of ethnic clichés" but critiqued Grote's book for getting "bogged down as it tries to layer a time-shifting plot".<ref name="NYT- One Thousand">{{cite news |last1=Collins-Hughes |first1=Laura |title=Review: In 'One Thousand Nights and One Day,' New Tales of Old Persia |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/theater/one-thousand-nights-and-one-day-review.html |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= The New York Times |date=April 15, 2018}}</ref> ''Tablet'' praised Grote's skill with dialogue but called the characters "frustratingly trope-laden."<ref name="Tablet - One Thousand">{{cite news |last1=Geselowitz |first1=Gabriela |title=In Ambitious New Play, Scheherazade Tells of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict |url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/in-ambitious-new-play-scheherazade-tells-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work=Tablet |date=April 20, 2018}}</ref>
===''Maria/Stuart''=== In 2008, ''Maria/Stuart'' premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., with Sarah Marshall in a starring role.<ref name="M/S - Express">{{cite news |last1=Trompeter |first1=Erin |title=Cleaning Up the Past: 'Maria/Stuart' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2008/08/28/cleaning_up_the_past_mariastuart/ |access-date=April 21, 2025 |work=Washington Post Express |date=August 28, 2008}}</ref> The play is a dramedy adapted from Friedrich Schiller's play ''Mary Stuart'', drawn from the relationship of Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. The play focuses on female rivalry in a contemporary U.S. suburban environment and includes supernatural elements.<ref name="M/S - Variety">{{cite news |last1=Harris |first1=Paul |title=Maria/Stuart |url=https://variety.com/2008/legit/reviews/maria-stuart-1200471089/ |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= Variety |date=September 2, 2008}}</ref> According to ''The Washington Post'', ''This Storm Is What We Call Progress'' and ''Maria/Stuart'' established Grote's reputation for "scripts that explode the boundaries between the ordinary and the chimerical, the political and the aesthetic, the intimate and the dizzyingly cosmic."<ref name="M/S - WaPo">{{cite news |last1=Wren |first1=Celia |title=Theater Is His Medium; Playwriting His Seance |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081500964.html |access-date=April 8, 2025 |newspaper= The Washington Post |date=August 17, 2008}}</ref>
===''Civilization (all you can eat)''=== From 2008 to 2011, Grote developed a surreal satire of contemporary life called ''Civilization (all you can eat)'', which features a plotline involving a pig named Big Hog plotting an escape from an abattoir layered into a story about a struggling waitress, her daughter who seeks financial success through online pornography. The play also addresses commercialism and interracial marriage.<ref name="CivWaPo">{{cite news |last1=Marks |first1=Peter |title=A full plate of the surreal in 'Civilization (All You Can Eat)' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-full-plate-of-the-surreal-in-civilization-all-you-can-eat/2012/02/21/gIQAGG83RR_story.html |access-date=April 21, 2025 |newspaper= The Washington Post |date=February 21, 2012}}</ref> According to Grote, it "documents the very beginning of the romance with Obama, the backlash against Obama, and the dawn of social media."<ref name="Civilization - Blackbird">{{cite journal |last1=Grote |first1=Jason |title=Civilization (All You Can Eat) Playwright's Notes |journal=Blackbird |date=Fall 2019 |volume=18 |issue=2 |url=https://blackbird-archive.vcu.edu/v18n2/gallery/grote-j/playwrights-notes-page.shtml |access-date=April 21, 2025}}</ref> ''Civilization'' was mounted at Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks festival in 2011, then given a world premiere at Woolly Mammoth, with Sarah Marshall in the role of Big Hog, in 2012.<ref name="CivNYT">{{cite web | last=Saltz | first=Rachel | title='Civilization (All You Can Eat)' at Here | website=The New York Times | date=June 22, 2011 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/theater/reviews/civilization-all-you-can-eat-at-here-review.html | access-date=May 8, 2025}}</ref>
===''Habit''=== Toward the end of his time in New York, Grote wrote a devised theatre work called ''Children of Kings'' for David M. Levine's performance installation ''Habit'', which premiered in 2012.<ref name="Habit - Politico" /> For the play-within-a-play, a ranch house set was constructed inside a warehouse, with three actors performing Grote's 90-minute play on a loop. Audience members would enter and depart at any point during the performance and could only view the play through the windows and doors of the house.<ref name="NYT - Habit">{{cite news |author-link = Ben Brantley | last1=Brantley |first1=Ben |title=You Have a Role in This Play: Peeping Tom |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/theater/reviews/david-levines-habit-at-the-essex-street-market.html |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= The New York Times |date=September 23, 2012}}</ref> Grote described the script as "a parody of the realism that dominated American stages at the time."<ref name="Oculus" /> ''Habit'' was recognized with a special citation in the 2013 Obie Awards.<ref name="Obie-2013">{{cite news |last1=Gans |first1=Andrew |title=Detroit, Grimly Handsome, Eisa Davis, John Rando, Shuler Hensley and More Are Obie Winners |url=http://www.playbill.com/news/article/178152-Detroit-Grimly-Handsome-Eisa-Davis-John-Rando-Shuler-Hensley-and-More-Are-Obie-Winners |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= Playbill |date=May 20, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130614021423/http://www.playbill.com/news/article/178152-Detroit-Grimly-Handsome-Eisa-Davis-John-Rando-Shuler-Hensley-and-More-Are-Obie-Winners |archive-date=June 14, 2013 }}</ref>
===''Basetrack Live''=== In 2014 Grote adapted an online citizen journalism project called ''One-Eight Basetrack'' with Seth Bockley and Anne Hamburger for En Garde Arts. The multimedia theatrical piece, called ''Basetrack Live'', is drawn entirely from text about the impact of war on veterans and their families. It premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival and was a ''New York Times'' critics' pick, with Charles Isherwood saying, "this production brings the gritty, brutal truths alive in ways that nothing I've read or seen has succeeded in doing."<ref name="s169">{{cite web | last=Isherwood | first=Charles | title=Lives of Returning Marines in 'Basetrack Live' at BAM | website=The New York Times | date=November 12, 2014 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/theater/lives-of-returning-marines-in-basetrack-live-at-bam.html | access-date=May 8, 2025}}</ref>
==Television career== In 2010, the post-financial crisis recession affecting live theater and a layoff from a teaching job at Rutgers University left Grote unemployed. He pivoted to television writing with work on ''Smash'', a musical drama series that premiered in 2012.<ref name="Marketplace">{{cite news |last1=Davidson |first1=Kate |title=After a year of unemployment — finally, a job |url=https://www.marketplace.org/story/2013/02/05/after-year-unemployment-finally-job |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work=Marketplace |date=February 15, 2013}}</ref> Grote relocated to Los Angeles, where he continued to work on television shows, including ''Hannibal'', ''The Lizzie Borden Chronicles'', ''Rogue'' (for which he was also story editor) and ''Knightfall'' (which he also co-produced).<ref name="ND" /><ref name="Grote - NYT op-ed">{{cite news |last1=Grote |first1=Jason |title=We Write Your Favorite Shows. We Need to Get Paid. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/opinion/we-write-your-favorite-shows-we-need-to-get-paid.html |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= The New York Times |date=May 2, 2017}}</ref>
For his work on the ''Mad Men'' episode "The Crash", ''International Business Times'' said that Grote and Matthew Weiner "got one of the very best performances we've seen from Jon Hamm in an episode that delivers scenes almost too funny to be believed alongside genuine, nail-biting terror."<ref name="MadMen - IBT">{{cite news |last1=Killoran |first1=Ellen |title='Mad Men' Season 6 Episode 8 Recap: The Doors of Perception |url=https://www.ibtimes.com/mad-men-season-6-episode-8-recap-doors-perception-1270031 |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= International Business Times |date=May 20, 2013}}</ref> That episode was named the 9th best episode of the show by ''Entertainment Weekly''.<ref name="e733">{{cite web | title=The 20 Best Episodes of 'Mad Men' | website=EW.com | date=May 4, 2015 | url=https://ew.com/tv/mad-men-20-best-episodes/ | access-date=May 8, 2025}}</ref> In 2012, he was one of the ''Mad Men'' writers nominated for the Writers Guild of America Awards for television drama.<ref name="WGA-2012">{{cite news |last1=Stone |first1=Sasha |title=Writers Guild Announces TV Nominees |url=https://www.awardsdaily.com/2012/12/06/writers-guild-announces-tv-nominees/ |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work=Awards Daily}}</ref>
Grote also co-wrote ''Poppy'', a TV comedy pilot about the young George H. W. Bush with Will Menaker and Matt Christman of the Chapo Trap House podcast.<ref name="v730">{{cite magazine | last=Fedorov | first=Andrew | title='Chapo Trap House' Isn't Going to Save the Democrats | magazine=Vanity Fair | date=January 23, 2025 | url=https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/chapo-trap-house-democrats-joe-rogan | access-date=May 8, 2025}}</ref>
==Other activities and personal life== Grote has written for the ''BioShock'' video game franchise and was a contributor to The Brooklyn Rail.<ref name="Oculus" /><ref name="BR">{{cite web | last=Grote | first=Jason | title=Jason Grote | website=The Brooklyn Rail | date=July 29, 2024 | url=https://brooklynrail.org/contributor/jason-grote/ | access-date=May 8, 2025}}</ref> In addition to his writing, Grote has taught writing at Rutgers University, the University of California, San Diego, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Queens College (CUNY), the University of Rochester, Hollins University, Point Park University and Whitman College.<ref name="ND" /><ref name="Playscripts">{{cite web |title=Jason Grote |url=https://www.playscripts.com/playwrights/bios/766 |publisher=Playscripts |access-date=April 8, 2025}}</ref> He was also a DJ on the New Jersey free-form radio station WFMU.<ref name="ND" />
Grote has been involved in political activism. He was arrested inside the Times Square Disney Store along with Reverend Billy and others in 1999 while protesting the company's usage of sweatshop labor.<ref name="CRR">{{cite book |last1=Grote |first1=Jason |editor1-last=Duncombe |editor1-first=Stephen |title=Cultural resistance reader |date=2002 |publisher=Verso |location=New York |isbn=1859843794 |pages=358–369 |access-date=May 8, 2025 |chapter=The God that people who do not believe in God believe in: Taking a bust with Reverend Billy.|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/culturalresistan00step/page/358/mode/2up}}</ref> Of that event he said "We can't hope to overwhelm this level of late-capitalist spectacle, but we can grab it, transform it and reverse its purpose: we can use it to reveal."<ref name="CRR" /> During the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, he dressed with clown makeup in an Air National Guard uniform emblazoned with the words "Mission Complicated" in mockery of George W. Bush.<ref name="NJBookofDead - Indiana" /> At one time, he was "arrested in a demonstration that involved releasing 10,000 crickets in downtown New York to protest the city's sale of community gardens," according to ''The Washington Post''.<ref name="M/S - WaPo" /> As a Writers Guild of America member, he has advocated for contracts that enable writers to maintain middle-class lifestyles.<ref name="Oculus" /><ref name="Grote - NYT op-ed" />
Grote is married to novelist Lorraine Martindale.<ref name="LAT - Martindale" /> They have two children.<ref name="Marketplace" /><ref name="Grote - NYT op-ed" />
==Works== ===Stage=== {| class="wikitable" style="margin-right: 0;" |- ! Year ! Title ! Notes |- |2004 |''The New Jersey Book of the Dead'' |Premiered at Bloomington Playwrights Project, Bloomington, Indiana<ref name="NJBookofDead - Indiana">{{cite news |last1=Walker |first1=George |title=The New Jersey Book of the Dead |url=https://indianapublicmedia.org/arts/the-new-jersey-book-of-the-dead.php |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work=Indiana Public Media |date=October 16, 2004}}</ref> |- |2006 |''Box Americana'' |Premiered at the Working Theater, New York City<ref name="Box Americana - NYTG">{{cite web |title=Box Americana: A Wal-Mart Retail Fantasia at the Bank Street Theater |url=https://www.newyorktheatreguide.com/theatre-news/news/box-americana-a-wal-mart-retail-fantasia-at-the-bank-street-theater |website=New York Theatre Guide |date=October 19, 2017 |access-date=April 8, 2025}}</ref> |- |2007 |''1001'' |Premiered at Denver Center Theater<ref name="1001-Premiere">{{cite web |title=1001 |url=https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/755/1001 |publisher=Concord Theatricals |access-date=April 8, 2025}}</ref> |- |2008 |''Hamilton Township'' |Premiered at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Austin, Texas<ref name="AC - Hamilton">{{cite news |last1=Pineo |first1=Barry |title=Hamilton Township |url=https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2008-06-13/634896/ |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= The Austin Chronicle |date=June 13, 2008}}</ref> |- |2008 |''This Storm Is What We Call Progress'' |Premiered at Rorschach Theatre, Washington, D.C.<ref name="WaPo - This Storm">{{cite news |last1=Marks |first1=Peter |title='This Storm': Partly Cloudy, With Lightning |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/style/2008/06/25/this-storm-partly-cloudy-with-lightning/84e4b955-4187-4be8-899a-1e85d87c221b/ |access-date=April 8, 2025 |newspaper= The Washington Post |date=June 24, 2008}}</ref> |- |2008 |''Maria/Stuart'' |Premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington, D.C. |- |2008 |''Darwin's Challenge'' |First reading at Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York City<ref name="Darwin's Challenge">{{cite web |last1=Hetrick |first1=Adam |title=Ensemble Studio Theatre Announces First Light 2009 Line-Up |url=https://playbill.com/article/ensemble-studio-theatre-announces-first-light-2009-line-up-com-156945 |website= Playbill |access-date=April 8, 2025 |date=January 14, 2009}}</ref> |- |2009 |''Three Classics'' |Collection of three one-act plays: ''(Anti)gone'', ''In His Bold Gaze, My Ruin is Writ Large'' and ''Prometheus Rendered''<ref name="Three Classics">{{cite book |last1=Grote |first1=Jason |title=Three Classics |date=2009 |publisher=Playscripts |isbn=9781623846619 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RCBIMwEACAAJ |access-date=April 8, 2025}}</ref> |- |2011 |''Civilization (all you can eat)'' |Premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington, D.C., 2012 |- |2012 |''Children of Kings'' |Premiered as a play within a play during David M. Levine's performance installation ''Habit''<ref name="Habit - Politico">{{cite news |last1=Cermatori |first1=Joseph |title=David Levine's 'Habit': A play, an environment, a social commentary |url=https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2012/09/david-levines-habit-a-play-an-environment-a-social-commentary-072762 |access-date=April 8, 2025 |work= Politico |date=September 28, 2012}}</ref> |- |2014 |''Basetrack Live'' |Premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival |- |2015-6 |''Tarzana'' |A collaboration with Radiohole at Mass Live Arts and The Performing Garage |- |2017 |''Shostakovich, or Silence''<ref name="Shostakovich">{{cite web |last1=Stephens |first1=Ted |title=Eavesdropping on the Russians |url=https://www.localtheaterco.org/localnewsroom/2017/3/6/pcpnas5gye1rqsiol5eewcj531uwcy |publisher=Local Theater Company |access-date=April 8, 2025 |date=March 6, 2017}}</ref> | |- |2018 |''One Thousand Nights and One Day'' |Musical adaptation of ''1001'' with music by Marisa Michelson |}
===Television=== {| class="wikitable" style="margin-right: 0;" |- ! Year ! Title ! style="width:65px;"| Writer (individual episodes) ! style="width:65px;"| Story editor ! style="width:65px;"| Producer |- | 2012 | ''Smash'' | {{yes}} | {{no}} | {{no}} |- | 2013 | ''Mad Men'' | {{yes}} | {{no}} | {{no}} |- | 2014 | ''Hannibal'' | {{yes}} | {{no}} | {{no}} |- | 2015 | ''The Lizzie Borden Chronicles'' | {{yes}} | {{no}} | {{no}} |- | 2015–16 | ''Rogue'' | {{yes}} | {{yes}} | {{no}} |- | 2017–18 | ''Knightfall'' | {{yes}} | {{no}} | {{yes}} |}
==External links== * {{IMDb name}} * [https://archive.org/details/10010000grot 1001] at the Internet Archive
==References== {{reflist}}
{{authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Grote, Jason}} Category:Place of birth missing (living people) Category:20th-century births Category:Living people Category:21st-century American educators Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:21st-century American screenwriters Category:21st-century people from California Category:21st-century people from New Jersey Category:21st-century people from New York (state) Category:American comedy writers Category:American male dramatists and playwrights Category:American male television writers Category:American radio DJs Category:Hollins University faculty Category:People from Williamsburg, Brooklyn Category:Point Park University faculty Category:Queens College, City University of New York faculty Category:Rutgers University faculty Category:Screenwriters from Los Angeles Category:Screenwriters from New Jersey Category:Screenwriters from New York City Category:New York University Tisch School of the Arts alumni Category:University of California, San Diego faculty Category:University of Rochester faculty Category:Whitman College faculty Category:Writers from Brooklyn