JOHN STRASBERG - CURRICULUM VITAE
John Strasberg's International career as actor, director, producer, designer, and writer, exemplifies and continues the artistic tradition of the Strasberg family. His revolutionary insights and discoveries in teaching, the Organic Creative Process, has gone beyond the systems and methods of the great teachers preceding him. All this marks him as a renaissance man, and one of the foremost theater artists of his generation. He returned to New York, after directing and teaching in Europe for twelve years, opening John Strasberg Studios, an International Center for Creative Development and Theater Arts Research in 1996, in conjunction with the publication of his first book, Accidentally On Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity. It is a deeply personal memoir that recounts the evolution and discovery of the Organic Creative Process. A documentary, also titled, Accidentally On Purpose, won Best Education Documentary at the Los Angeles International Independent Film Festival in 2000, as well as winning several Honorable Mentions awards in other festivals. He has conceived, designed, and directed major, award-winning productions of Pirandello, Ibsen, O'Neill, Lope de Vega, and Beckett, among others. In Europe since 1983, most recently productions of Shakespeare's, Richard III, Aristophanes, The Assemblywomen, in Spain, the latter as a musical play for the Festival de Merida, and Cyrano de Bergerac. In 2005 he founded the Accidental Repertory Theater (ART).
In New York, in the mid-1980's he cofounded the Mirror Repertory Company directed, Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets, Inheritors by Susan Glaspell, Rain, Vivat! Vivat! Regina!, and Ghosts by Ibsen, working with artists like Geraldine Page, whom he met at the Actors' Studio, where he worked alongside her, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Al Pacino, Marilyn Monroe, Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Elia Kazan, and many others, now famous, actors and directors. He also co-directed Alice in Wonderland on Broadway with Eva LeGallienne.
He had schools in New York and Paris, in the 1980's. Aside from John Strasberg Studios, and ART, he teaches, directs, and lectures in many countries, at the National Theater in London, the Centro Dramatico in Madrid, Spain, the National Theater in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the National Film Board in Canada, and in Italy, Germany, Norway, England, Peru, and several Universities in the United States like Yale, NYU, and The New School.
He has developed productions using the actors trained at JSS, in Anna Weiss, a stage reading of La Ronde, and an evening of scenes from Chekhov, Astrov's Nightmare. Many of the actors belonging to the ART workshop have studied with him, either in his private classes, or in ART's workshop.
He developed productions for ART in NY, and has written several plays, Playing House, and Adams' Apples, inspired by the plays of Ibsen and Chekhov, respectively, as well as a musical play, The Shooting Party, adapted by him from the only full-length novel written by Anton Chekhov. He also wrote the lyrics. In the fall of 2011, ART produced Adams' Apples, a contemporary adaptation inspired by Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, written and directed by Mr. Strasberg, who also played a leading role in the play. And, a new play by him, The Good Morning American, Johnny Johnson Dream Show.
In 2012, he directed a production of Eugene O'Neill's The Moon for the Misbegotten for the Teatro Español in Madrid, in addition to his ongoing workshops in New York, Paris, Madrid, Milan, and Montreal.