Jez Bond

In the theatre’s first season, Bond directed a new play by Sarah Rutherford, Adult Supervision, and a Christmas “anti-panto”, Sleeping Beauty, which he wrote with actor Mark Cameron. Bond also directed the 2014 and 2015 Christmas shows, Jack and the Beanstock and Rapunzel, both co-written with Cameron. In May 2015, Bond directed Hurling Rubble at the Moon, one segment of Avaes Mohammad's double bill about radicalization in the UK.

The McKellen show and other fundraising strategies having permitted Park Theatre to produce more in-house productions each year, 2018 saw Bond direct Robert Schenkkan's post-Trump dystopia Building the Wall. In July 2019, he will direct Whodunnit [Unrehearsed], a fundraiser written by himself and actor Mark Cameron, in which celebrity actors will star in a murder mystery with a script unknown to them until the moment of performance.

In April 2017 Bond directed Miriam Margolyes in the world premiere of John Misto’s Madame Rubenstein, based on the story of cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein. Following up with what was described as "a palpable hit," Bond directed Ian McKellen's one-man show, Shakespeare, Tolkien, Others & You, a fundraiser for the theatre that ran for eleven performances in July 2017.

The majority of plays produced at the theatre to date (approaching 100 at the end of 2016) have been financed by external production companies, with Park Theatre acting as the host venue. In 2015, Park Theatre won The Stage magazine's Fringe Theatre of the Year Award.

While at Hull University, Bond met Melli Marie, an American actor studying for an MA in theatre. The two conceived a plan to create a new theatre, and began scouting possible sites and funding sources. In 2010, they were able to put a down payment on a disused building near Finsbury Park station and begin its conversion into a theatre containing two auditoria of 200 and 90 seats. Following a high-profile fundraising campaign, Park Theatre opened in May 2013, earning Bond the accolade of "an entrepreneur in the Victorian style, a self-made theatrical industrialist who builds things from the ground up."

Bond initially worked for Finsbury Park-based Y Touring Theatre Company, managing and co-directing touring plays in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2002 he co-founded Stages International with Charles J. Fourie, directing Fourie’s Big Boys at the Croydon Warehouse. In 2005, Bond was awarded a residency under the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme at the Watford Palace Theatre where he directed J.B. Priestly’s I Have Been Here Before and was assistant director to Lawrence Till on several plays. As a freelance director, his productions included Sleeping Beauty at Salisbury Playhouse, Brenda Gottsche's The Max Factor at the Baron’s Court Theatre, London, and Roald Dahl's The Twits which toured in Switzerland.

Jez Bond (born 1978) is a British theatre director. One of the cohort of artistic directors born in the 1960s and 70s who are now running significant UK theatres, he opened the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, London in 2013.