Blondell to Explore the Bard in America

John Blondell, Westmont professor of theater arts, will lecture about “Born in the USA: William Shakespeare and the American Theatrical Tradition” Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 8 p.m. at Hieronymus Lounge in Westmont’s Kerrwood Hall. The Phi Kappa Phi Paul C. Wilt Faculty Lecture is free and open to the public.

Blondell is founder and director of the Lit Moon Theatre Company, an award-winning international theater ensemble, and is founder of the Lit Moon World Theatre Festival, an international theater 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.

His talk includes two parts. The first describes Shakespeare’s ascendancy on the American stage, exploring his unique relationship to American national and cultural identity. The second topic is theoretical and vaguely polemical, focusing on what Blondell sees as major differences between American orientation to the theater, and one that might be vaguely termed “European.”

“The examination of these contexts shows the significance of Shakespeare to the American psyche, reveals major points of departure between American and European theater, and reveals the provocative state of contemporary Shakespearean practice and criticism,” Blondell says.

Faculty responding to the talk include Mitchell Thomas, Westmont assistant professor of the theater arts, and Dennis Kennedy, a UC Santa Barbara visiting theater and dance professor from Trinity College Dublin. Kennedy is the former Samuel Beckett professor of drama at Trinity and has authored several books including “Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance.”

Blondell has been teaching at Westmont since 1988 and has cemented his reputation as one of Santa Barbara’s most progressive, adventurous directors, winning numerous awards.