John Farmanesh-Bocca

This production of Inge’s play (also a 1955 movie) has its moments while consistently delivering the longing, the dissatisfaction and, yes, also the sensuality that PICNIC offers up. ur critic think of PICNIC at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble?

Picnic, the sensual, passionate and delightfully funny Pulitzer Prize winning play by William Inge, opens tonight at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in an all-new production directed John Farmanesh-Bocca. Check out the photos, below.

John Farmanesh-Bocca is a multi-award-winning physical theatre director, the Founding Artistic Director of both Not Man Apart - Physical Theatre Ensemble (2005-2015) and Shakespeare Santa Monica (2003-2014). Now he has shifted gears to go on a search for America by directing the sensual, passionate, and delightfully funny Pulitzer Prize winning play Picnic by William Inge, with his version featuring an entirely Black American cast. I decided to speak with him about his vision for presenting the quintessentially American play and the unique challenges faced while shifting gears from physical movement to character development.

Odyssey Theatre Ensemble will present a revival of Picnic, the sensual, passionate, and delightfully funny Pulitzer Prize-winning play by William Inge. Directed by multiple award winner John Farmanesh-Bocca (Tempest Redux, Lysistrata Unbound), performances will run March 25 through May 28 at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A.

Winners have been announced for the 2020 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards - which were back bigger than ever, celebrating the best in local theatre of the past decade!

Digital arts journal Stage Raw announces the nominees for its fifth annual Stage Raw Theater Awards, to be held Monday night September 9, 2019, at Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets will go on sale Wednesday August 7, 2019. The Stage Raw Theater Awards honor the finest work performed on Los Angeles area stages of 99-seats or fewer, and are selected by a jury of Stage Raw critics. This year's awards celebrate work performed between June 1, 2018 and May 31, 2019.

Two venerable Los Angeles intimate theaters will each host a Mueller Report Read-A-Thon, offering Angelenos the opportunity to hear the Mueller Report read aloud, in its entirety, on either side of the City. The Fountain Theatre in East Hollywood will host a single, 15-hour event on Thursday, July 18 from 9 a.m. to midnight. The Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in West L.A. will hold a separate marathon reading, breaking it up into two 8-hour sessions on Monday, July 22 and Tuesday, July 23, each from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Admission to both Read-A-thons is free and open to the public.

John Farmanesh-Bocca directs the world premiere of a bracing new version of Eduardo Machado's LYSISTRATA UNBOUND, starring Brenda Strong (Supergirl, 13 Reasons Why) as Lysistrata, in a collaboration between Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and Not Man Apart - Physical Theatre Ensemble. First presented at the Getty Villa as part of its 2013 Lab Series, it was inspired by American anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's efforts for peace following the death of her son in Iraq. With unflinching intensity, it examines the insurmountable cost of war and one woman's epiphany in the face of personal tragedy. 

LYSISTRATA UNBOUND, a new take on Aristophanes' LYSISTRATA by Eduardo Machado will world premiere June 9, 2018 in an Odyssey Theatre/Not Man Apart collaboration, with John Farmanesh-Bocca directing his wife Brenda Strong in the title role.  We had the chance to ask a few questions of the always working Brenda.

Odyssey Theatre Ensemble collaborates with Not Man Apart-Physical Theatre Ensemble to present the world premiere of Lysistrata Unbound, a new and unexpected dramatic version of the classic Greek story written by acclaimed playwright Eduardo Machado. NMA artistic director emeritus John Farmanesh-Bocca (Tempest Redux, Ajax in Iraq) directs June 9 through Aug. 4 at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A.

Culver City residents Jeannine and Jack Stehlin are celebrating the 21st anniversary season of their New American Theatre production company by presenting MACBETH: REVISITED, directed by and starring Jack Stehlin in the title role with choreography and sound design by John Farmanesh-Bocca. Last year, this team of two brilliant production designers brought the award-winning Tempest Redux to the Odyssey Theatre, with mind-blowing choreography enabling the classic tale to resonant with modern audiences. Their great skill working together is again gracing a local stage at Sacred Fools on Hollywood's Theatre Row, featuring a gender-bending cast of company members who tell Shakespeare's tale of power, greed, and the blood-thirst for ambition - all in a roughly 95-minute theatrical journey.

Playwright/actor John Copeland's latest theatrical project ANITA BRYANT'S PLAYBOY INTERVIEW recounts a specific incident in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction saga of the former Miss Oklahoma and runner-up to Miss America whose 'Save Our Children' campaign fought to repeal gay rights in Dale County, Florida in 1977. 

TEMPEST REDUX's certainly an welcomed addition to John Farmanesh-Bocca's resume of his visceral, modern re-workings of Shakespeare classics. Farmanesh-Bocca's trademark physicality shines in the inspired pairing of Dash Pepin and Willem Long, both portraying Prospero's slave Caliban in tandem. Their heightened primal antics, acrobatic lifts, frog-leaping and finishing each other's sentences command the stage.

Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and The New American Theatre celebrate El Niño with a perfect storm of comedy, romance, mystery and magic. Adapted, directed and choreographed by John Farmanesh-Bocca and starring New American Theatre artistic director Jack Stehlin (Weeds) as Prospero, Tempest Redux opens at West L.A.'s Odyssey Theatre on February 20.

Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble opens its 2014 season with a Los Angeles premiere of AJAX IN IRAQ by award-winning playwright Ellen Mclaughlin, directed and choreographed by NMA artistic director John Farmanesh-Bocca. The play intertwines the important and timely issue of sexual abuse against women in the military with the parable of the great warrior Ajax, which is said to be one of the first and oldest stories to openly portray the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Many female combatants in the U.S. Armed Services are subjected to intense sexual abuse, but remain quiet. Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble opens its 2014 season with a Los Angeles premiere directed by artistic director John Farmanesh-Bocca. Ajax in Iraq by award-winning playwright Ellen Mclaughlin opens at the Miles Playhouse in Santa Monica for a four-week run on May 8.

Through combined and extremely intricate dance movements, the skill of the actors/dancers certainly exemplified the group's moniker as a physical theatre ensemble with each scene more exciting that the last. You will not be able to take your eyes off them!

Not Man Apart (NMA), the Los Angeles-based physical theatre ensemble since 2004, presents John Farmanesh-Bocca's adaptation of Roman Philosopher and Playwright Seneca the Younger's tragedy Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), opening tonight, June 6 and closing Sunday, June 23, 2013.

Not Man Apart (NMA), the Los Angeles-based physical theatre ensemble since 2004, presents John Farmanesh-Bocca's adaptation of Roman Philosopher and Playwright Seneca the Younger's tragedy Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), opening Thursday, June 6 and closing Sunday, June 23, 2013.

Award-winning theatre companies Circus Theatricals and Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble join forces to co-produce the World Premiere of Titus Redux, an adrenaline-fueled adaptation of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, written, conceived, and choreographed by Not Man Apart's John Farmanesh-Bocca. Starring Circus Theatricals' Jack Stehlin in the title role, the production opens Sunday, Aug. 29, 7PM, at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin is Executive producer.