John Blondell

John Blondell is a Full Professor in the Westmont College Theatre Arts Department. Since coming to Westmont in 1988, John has taught a wide variety of classes, including all levels of acting, directing, theatre history, and dramatic literature and criticism. His stagings of classical and contemporary plays have received both popular and critical acclaim, and cemented his reputation as one of Santa Barbara’s most progressive, adventurous directors. He has won numerous awards including Independent Theatre Awards for directing Westmont productions of The Critic (1999) and Much Ado About Nothing (2000), and “Best Production?” of the year citations for Peter Pan and The Critic in area press.

John is founder and director of the Lit Moon Theatre Company, an award-winning international theatre ensemble, and is founder of the Lit Moon World Theater Festival, an international theatre festival produced yearly in Santa Barbara. In 2006, he founded the Lit Moon World Shakespeare Festival, the first of its kind in the United States, and one of only five in the world. For Lit Moon, he has directed thirteen productions, including Metamorphoses, Through the Looking Glass, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, Peer Gynt, The Diary of a Madman, The Master and Margarita, The Visions of Aksenty Ivanovich, and Hamlet; and received Independent Theatre Awards for Alice in Wonderland (1992), Henry V (2000), and King Richard II (2006). With Lit Moon, John has programmed seven World Theatre Festivals, receiving an Independent Theatre Award in 1999. He has presented companies and artists from Bulgaria, Poland, France, Germany, Russia, Hungary, South Africa, China, and the Czech Republic, and has developed numerous collaborations, whereby visiting international artists create new work with the Lit Moon company. In addition, the company has been seen at the European Month of Culture Festival in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (2000); at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2001); the Montreal Fringe Festival (2003), where Hamlet received the Centaur Award for Best Drama; the Montreal Wildside Festival (2004); the 8th Shakespearean Festival in Gdansk (2004); the Fireman’s Theatre in Prague (2004); and the 10th Shakespearean Festival in Gdansk (2006).

John received the 2003 Westmont College Faculty Research Award for his work as a director with both Westmont and Lit Moon.

John holds a Ph. D. in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lives in Santa Barbara with his wife Vicki and their sons Nicholas, William, and Simon.