Tag archives: John Blondell

‘Wind in the Willows’ is Final Curtain for Blondell
By Scott Craig   |   March 4, 2025

Westmont’s famed theater arts professor John Blondell, who will retire after 37 years at the college, directs The Wind in the Willows, which runs at various dates and times through March 2 in Porter Theatre. Purchase tickets, which cost $20 for general admission and $12 for students and seniors, at westmont.edu/box-office. Blondell says he chose […]

Have a Ball with the Capulets
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 5, 2024

As if to underscore the timelessness of Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare’s tragic tale gets a different site-specific spin through Westmont College’s John Blondell as part of a mini festival this weekend. The veteran professor of theater arts has cut and refashioned Shakespeare’s play into something called The Capulet Black-and-White Ball, refracting the classic through a […]

Audience Thrust into ‘The Capulets’
By Scott Craig   |   February 27, 2024

Westmont’s John Blondell, a longtime professor of theater arts, puts his own contemporary, site-specific spin on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as part of a mini-festival about the famous tragedy Thursday, Feb. 29, at 7 pm; Friday, March 1, and Saturday, March 2, at 7 pm and 9 pm; and Sunday, March 3, at 7 pm […]

Final Weekend for Flying A
By Scott Craig   |   March 7, 2023

Wet weather and storm watches didn’t keep people away from the opening weekend of the Westmont College Festival Theatre’s world premiere Diamond to Dust: A Flying A Fantasy. Director John Blondell and writer Michael Bernard, a local actor, educator and playwright, have brought Santa Barbara’s treasured cinematic history to the stage in a creative exploration […]

Fun Flying to the Westmont Stage
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 28, 2023

If Diamond to Dust: A Flying A Fantasy is even half as much fun as interviewing the principals who dubbed themselves “good whiskey collaborators” in a conference call, audiences are in for a heckuva ride. This screwball comedy from the pen of actor/director/UCSB Theater professor Michael Bernard will have its world premiere at Westmont this […]

Talk Explores Bringing Flying A to the Stage
By Scott Craig   |   February 14, 2023

Westmont’s John Blondell discusses the world premiere play that will bring Santa Barbara’s silent film history to the stage in a Westmont Downtown Lecture Thursday, February 16, at 5:30 pm in the Community Arts Workshop (CAW), 631 Garden Street, in downtown Santa Barbara. “The Film Within a Play: Celebrating Santa Barbara’s Flying A Studios on […]

More Money, Love: Theater Stages ‘The Miser’
By Scott Craig   |   March 1, 2022

The Westmont College Festival Theatre and John Blondell, Westmont’s award-winning director and professor of theater arts, stage The Miser, or the School for Lies, Moliere’s funny, highly theatrical on-the-verge-of-the-absurd comedy February 25-26, March 3-5 at 7:30 pm, and March 5 at 2 pm, all in Westmont’s Porter Theatre. Tickets are $10 for students and seniors, […]

Music, Theater Double Our Opera Pleasure
By Scott Craig   |   February 20, 2020

Westmont’s music and theater arts departments present two, one-act Italian operas offering performers and audience members a chance to enjoy two different stories with varying musical styles. Gioachino Rossini’s The Marriage Contract and Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi will be performed together February 28, March 1 and 3 at 7 pm at the New Vic Theater […]

Bicoastal Roots: 5 Qs with Bryan Titus
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 27, 2018

It was less than two months ago that the Bryan Titus Trio played his last gig in town as a Santa Barbara resident, the last in a series of shows that had established the organic roots rocker/Americana artist as a true local sensation, capable of exciting the crowd whether jamming in a bar’s outdoor patio […]

Muppets, Malkovich-Meister and More at PuppetPalooza
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 1, 2018

For Santa Barbara’s first PuppetPalooza, creator Mitchell Kriegman has come up with a festival so vast and imaginatively populated with puppets, marionettes, and just about every other possible permutation of the genre giant and small, including literally the hand and glove, even his own character Clarissa might have a hard time explaining it all to […]