About Lit Moon Theatre Company, Santa Barbara
Live theater made locally, with an international reach.
Founded in 1991, we are a Santa Barbara based collective of theater artists that integrates aesthetic experimentation with cross-cultural interaction and understanding and cultivates a physical, image-based performance vocabulary. Our productions have been hailed locally and internationally for their pioneering theatricality.
Since 1992, Lit Moon has created 41 new theatrical projects, produced twelve international theater festivals in Santa Barbara, and received dozens of awards for its artists, performing in Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Scotland, Canada, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, and China.
About Artistic Director John Blondell
John Blondell is Founding Artistic Director of the Lit Moon Theatre Company, Director of the Lit Moon World Theater Festivals, Chair and Professor of Theatre Arts at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and co-founder of the Bitola (Macedonia) Shakespeare Festival. Blondell has directed over 80 professional productions, and produced another 60 for Lit Moon’s various international festivals.
Directing credits include Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Pinochio, Peer Gynt, The Master and Margarita, Henry V, Hamlet, Tartuffe, King Richard II, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Frankenstein, The Clouds, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, Our Town, The Wedding, Not I, Catastrophe, Henry VI, Part 3, The Tempest, The Pirates of Penzance, The Insect Comedy, The Cherry Orchard, The Old Maid and the Thief, La Serva Padrona, Antony and Cleopatra, The Insect Comedy, Dido and Aeneas, Dido Queen of Carthage, Julius Caesar, The Glass Menagerie, As You Like It, Richard III, and many others.
Blondell’s Lit Moon productions have been seen in China, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Scotland, and Canada. His international credits include productions for the Tampereen Teatteri in Tampere, Finland; the Bitola (Macedonia) National Theatre (four occasions); and the National Theatre of Albania.
Blondell’s Bitola National Theatre production of Henry VI, Part 3 was featured at the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival, presented by Shakespeare’s Globe London. His 2013 Westmont College production of The Pirates of Penzance received three national awards, including “Distinguished Production of a Musical,” and “Distinguished Director of a Musical,” from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Blondell is the recipient of eleven Independent Theatre Awards for excellence in Directing, the 2003 Faculty Research Award from Westmont College, and in 2009 was named a “Local Hero” by the Santa Barbara Independent for his “tireless devotion” to the international theatre community. In 2014 Blondell was named “Teacher of the Year” in the Humanities Division at Westmont.
Blondell holds a PhD in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his family.