Jorge Merced

Jorge Merced
Born	1965 Carolina, Puerto Rico
Occupation	Actor, Director

Jorge B. Merced (born 1965) is a New York-based Puerto Rican actor, theatre director, and gay activist. He is associate artistic director of Pregones Theater, a bilingual (Spanish/English) Puerto Rican/Latino theater company located near Hostos Community College in the Bronx, New York City. He is best known for his role as Loca la de la locura [The Queen of Madness] in Pregones’s play El bolero fue mi ruina [The Bolero Was My Downfall].

Merced was born and raised in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and came to the United States as an adult in 1982. He started out as a dancer in college and went on to receive an undergraduate degree from the City College of New York (CUNY) Theatre Department, also studying at the Escuela Internacional de Teatro de América Latina y el Caribe (EITALC) [International School of Latin American and Caribbean Theatre] in Cuba and at the Alvin Ailey School in New York. Merced is fully bilingual in English and Spanish and performs in both languages. He has trained, performed, and directed throughout the U.S. and abroad in Brazil, Chile, Cuba, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Slovakia, and Spain. Merced is openly gay and has spoken about how his personal experiences in Puerto Rico and New York have been profoundly marked by his sexuality.