The son of émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland, Lars Jan is a director, playwright, designer, visual artist, activist, and educator, working at the intersection of theater, technology, and public engagement. He leads interdisciplinary creative teams to develop hybrid works spanning artistic mediums, with performance most often the hub, fueled by extensive research and collaboration in fields beyond the arts, such as science, anthropology, and engineering. These works explore issues such as surveillance, national borders, housing scarcity, screen-based persuasion, and climate change.

He is a Guggenheim Fellow, USA Artists Fellow, TED Senior Fellow, Sundance Art of Practice Fellow, Creative Capital Awardee, and winner the 3rd Audemar Piguet Art Commission. He is currently developing a mixed-reality performance tracing the Afghan side of his family 40,000 years into the past; a photo series of vehicles in which people live in LA; and a performance about Odysseus and dementia. He is Head of Directing in the School of Theater at CalArts.