Jan-David Soutar is a Los Angeles-based writer, filmmaker, and theater director with an obsession that started early and never quit: history doesn't stay where you put it. It bleeds. It haunts. It shows up in a parking lot in 1952, in a mall in 2007, in a gated community when the power goes out. He writes about that.
He is an everyday philosopher, a passionate storyteller and an obsessive history lover who will take on with Euripidean might the stories and people that time has not yet come to understand. His work spans features, television pilots, and theater. It is surreal, absurd, existential and deeply strange in ways that are too informed to be accidental.
He founded Society of the Cellar, a Los Angeles theater company dedicated to the kind of work that makes audiences uncomfortable in the best possible way. His play Oh Constantine!, a historical musical comedy about the Council of Nicaea, earned a Zephyr Zest Award nomination at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. He is also a produced short filmmaker and a working actor.
He is from Baltimore. He loves the Ravens and the Orioles. He cannot stop writing.
Frank Zappa, John Waters, The Wire, the first 3 seasons of Banshee, Star Trek TNG, Seijun Suzuki, Choose Your Own Adventure books, Byung-Chul Han, Slavoj Zizek, bell hooks, Old Bay, Royal Farms potato wedges, Fatboy Slim, Esquivel, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Agnes Varda, MGMT, The Goonies, Bulfinch's Mythology, Will Durant, Stephen King (whom he shares a birthday with), Mary and Percy Shelley, Turner Classic Movies, Caravaggio, Voltaire, Cicero, Eisenstein, black and white photography, Lycanthropy, Kafka, the screenplays of Jack Nicholson, Hank Green, Albert Camus, Richard Rorty, James Baldwin, Eastman and Laird, Jim Henson's darker work, Brecht, Mitch Hedberg, Mark Twain, Ibram X. Kendi, Mel Brooks, dance-walking his dog to Baltimore house music, and Tupac Shakur.
Original screenplays and pilots. Strange premises, specific worlds, genuine stakes. Written by Jan-David Soutar. Available upon request.
A feminist philosophy grad student has a one-night stand with a self-described incel. When she ghosts him, he kidnaps her to find out why.
When a solar flare wipes the planet clean of power, a Cheyenne prophet leads tribes and the dispossessed to reclaim sacred land.
The day before high school graduation, 2007. Two outcast best friends take a dare from the cool kids to drop acid at the local mall, or risk being losers forever.
A historical musical comedy about the Council of Nicaea, the 325 AD gathering where the Roman Emperor Constantine attempted to settle a theological argument that nearly tore Christianity apart. Funny. Strange. Surprisingly moving. Exactly the kind of show nobody expected to exist.
"Equal parts hilarious and disturbing... like if Beckett wrote a sitcom set in hell."
LA WeeklyWriter and Director. The end of the world is coming and the World President is thrilled about it. (2025)
Director. Staged scene from the acclaimed play. (2023)
Writer and Director. Stage adaptation. A surreal confrontation between ideology and desire. (2026)
Writer and Director. Interactive performance installation based on Voltaire.
Selected directed work. For the full catalog including director's commentaries and production deep-dives, visit MDLA Films.
Written and Directed by Jan-David Soutar. A spoken-word short following a young Black man through his day.
Written and Directed by Jan-David Soutar. A fan film born from obsession and the show that got him on set as an actor.
Directed by Jan-David Soutar. Two girls make the crossing. A story of resilience told with restraint.
On a stormy night in a 1950s university parking lot, a misguided student tries to expose her professor's affair and it goes sideways when she calls his bluff and his wife picks up. A 9-minute dramatic thriller. Directed by Jan-David Soutar.
Visit the Film SiteScript requests, writing collaborations, directing inquiries, fellowship applications, existential conversations. All of it welcome.
