Jake Friedman

Jake Friedman

Jake S. Friedman is an award-winning animated filmmaker and a published non-fiction author. He is also an animation historian and has contributed to several books and documentaries as a leading expert in Disney history. He wrote his first original play at age seven, titled “Baby Thundercloud Builds a Fire,” directing his six-year-old brothers as the dual leads. He began writing poems and songs at age nine (winning a county-wide award), and hasn’t stopped. He spent high school and college moonlighting in school theater and studying play-writing on the side, and has been teaching the story of Esther since 2004. His favorite musicals are Little Shop of Horrors, Pippen, Music Man, and Les Mis. He is currently earning his graduate degree in creative arts psychotherapy. His original musical based on the book of Esther, “Esther Unmasked,” is being workshopped and is in the festival circuit.
Jake has been an educator, an animator, an author, and an activist.