About Me — James Patrick Nelson
...you can call me Jamie...
I’m an outgoing, exuberant, big-hearted, passionate, queer actor/writer/filmmaker/poet/storyteller, loving life in New York City, with extended work trips to Los Angeles in recent years.
First and foremost, I’m a stage actor. I recently starred in two Off-Broadway world premieres — one a NYT Critic’s Pick. I performed in the LA transfer of Broadway’s Slave Play, the most Tony-nominated production in history. I starred in the world premiere of Immortal Longings, the final play by Terrence McNally, the same year he won the Lifetime Achievement Tony. I starred in two regional transfers of Bedlam’s Off-Broadway hit Sense and Sensibility, in a Broadway try-out at the American Repertory Theatre and a twice-extended production at the Folger Theatre where we won several Helen Hayes Awards. I stepped into Bedlam’s Pygmalion Off-Broadway, and joined the sold-out production in Boston. I began my Off-Broadway career in productions of Chekhov opposite Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ethan Hawke. And a recent article chronicles my adventures on a national tour with a classical repertory theatre early in my career.
But whenever I get stuck thinking those credits are all that define my life — or that the credits I’ve yet to achieve are a sign of things gone wrong — I try to remember my life is also made of a million beautiful memories I could never put on a resume…but perhaps I could put here…
…like the other night when I tipped my head back in bed and looked upside down out the window at the snowfall floating up like champagne bubbles…or when I road the train across the river and the sunset burst out from behind the Brooklyn Bridge as the opening notes of Build Me Up Buttercup mounted in my ear…or walking south through Prospect Park at night after the first snowstorm of the season, watching the lampposts illuminate the people riding makeshift sleds in the field as the final piercing strings of Falling Slowly punctuated the squawks of flying geese.
I was often breathless with gratitude at the sight of natural beauty like that when I visited LA last summer. I grew up there, and as a kid, I couldn’t get out fast enough. I craved adventure — wine, gentlemen, and song — the vibrant bustle of brilliant people close together, making art and making love, and I naturally thought I needed to venture far away from where I grew up to find those things. But now that I’m an adult and I’ve spent my life building creative communities, I can carry that spirit of adventure anywhere I go…And I’ve realized that what I actually craved as a child was autonomy, the ability to seek adventure on my own terms, without my parents’ supervision…And recognizing that autonomy was the secret ingredient, it’s been surprisingly healing to remember what autonomy felt like before I really had it — before I was out from under the thumb of banal suburban civility, walking alone at night was an adventure fit for Kerouac and Hemingway…to be alone with my thoughts was the greatest freedom.
It’s so incredible, in those quiet moments, when the rush of now sweeps up ecstatically in me, and I can see the beauty and value of the life I’m living, as opposed to tricking myself into thinking my life is something I have to wait for — a common pitfall for the unceasingly ambitious young artist. My writing on Medium — as well as recent performances at the Moth and slam poetry venues — has been an empowering opportunity to make art out of my lived experience and to share it with an audience/readership.
One of my biggest, best endeavors in making art out of personal experience is my TV pilot “For Years to Come,” a half-hour romantic dramedy starring Richard Riehle from “Office Space,” which has played to sold-out crowds at numerous festivals across the country, including SeriesFest, the #1 TV festival in America, and Outfest, the largest film festival in LA. Check out this article written at the early stages of development to learn more about what inspired the pilot, and follow us on social media for trailers, clips, and updates on where and when we’ll be making a full season.
Most of the feature film screenplays I’ve been writing and developing focus on majority-queer ensembles, striving to portray nuanced and complicated LGBTQ+ protagonists in stories where their queerness is not the conflict.
As such, a lot of my writing on Medium recently has focused on queerness in cinema, including a history of queer exclusion at the Academy Awards:
an analysis of the queer murderer-suicide rate in my favorite films as a kid:
a contextual analysis of the Call Me By Your Name age-gap hysteria:
a queer reading of the allegory in Pleasantville:
an attempted defense of allegory, dissecting artist-journey narratives:
a retrospective on the “camp” aesthetics I thought I resisted as a child:
a personal story about profound emotional echoes in Dead Poet’s and Milk:
an essay on the optimism I learned from A Home at the End of the World:
and an essay on the lack of empowered sexually submissive men in film:
I am so thankful to be part of the Medium community, and I really hope you all will read my work and enjoy it!
