John Blondell

John Blondell is Professor of Theatre Arts at Westmont College. Since coming to Westmont in 1988, John has taught a wide variety of courses, including all levels of acting, directing, theatre history, and dramatic literature and criticism. His productions of classical and contemporary plays have received local, regional, and international acclaim, and cemented his reputation as one of Santa Barbara’s most progressive, adventurous directors. John’s Westmont credits include Peter Pan, Mother Courage and Her Children, Much Ado About Nothing, Frankenstein, The Clouds, Anonymous, Play Beckett, 33 Swoons: Three Farces by Anton Chekhov, and many others.

John is co-founder and director of the Lit Moon Theatre Company, an award-winning international theatre ensemble, and founder of the Lit Moon World Theater Festival, an international theatre festival produced yearly in Santa Barbara. In 2006, he created the Lit Moon World Shakespeare Festival, the only international Shakespeare Festival in the United States, and one of seven in the world. For Lit Moon, he has directed twenty-one 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, Hamlet, Tartuffe, The Wedding, Queen C, Humbug, a (Lit Moon) Christmas Carol, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, and many others. John has programmed twelve World Theatre Festivals, producing over 60 productions since the festival’s inception in 1998, including Theatre Credo, Sofia, Bulgaria; the Shamans, Budapest, Hungary; Do-Theatre, St. Petersburg; the Bulgarian National Theatre, Sofia; the Marhanishvilli State Drama Theatre, Tbilisi, Georgia; Teatr Modjeska, Legnica, Poland; Canus Tempus, Montreal; the Market Theatre of Johannesburg; the State Puppet Theatre of Bourgas, Bulgaria; and many others.

Since 2000, Blondell has enjoyed an active international directing career. Blondell’s productions have 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, Poland (2004); the Fireman’s Theatre in Prague (2004); the 10th Shakespearean Festival in Gdansk (2006); the International Festival “The City,” in Legnica, Poland (2007); the Festival of International Alternative Theatre (Kotor and Podgorica, Montenegro); and the Young Open Theatre Festival (2007). In 2009, he directed and co-wrote An American Tune for the Macedonian National Theatre in Bitola, and in 2010 staged The Wonderful Adventures of Nils for the Tampereen Teatteri in Tampere, Finland.

Blondell’s productions have received numerous awards, including Independent Theatre Awards for Aice in Wonderland, The Critic, Much Ado About Nothing, King Henry V, King Richard II, Queen C, Our Town, and for producing the 1999 Lit Moon World Theater Festival; and Best Production of the Year citations for Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Critic, and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. In 2003, John received the Westmont College Faculty Research Award for his work as a director, and in 2009 was named a “Local Hero” by the “Santa Barbara Independent” for his concerted work in international theatre. John is the Founding President of interACT, a network of international theatres created to make co-productions with one another. 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.