02/03/2020
Introducing our lead actor -
John Zibell is an actor, director, and scholar of performance and media. He is currently a lecturer in Film Production at The University of Salford. Zibell did conservatory training in Stanislavski-based realism and Spolin improvisation in New York with Mike Nichols, George Morrison, and Paul Sills at The New Actors’ Workshop. After nearly two decades of continual study in Nichols’ master class Zibell and Nichols collaborated with Joe Roland on Roland’s off-Broadway play On the Line. Zibell originated the role of Jimmy Patraglia during the 4-year development process for the piece. Zibell has since made experimental and devised theatre at the grassroots level with Shira Piven, and Diane Paulus as well as realist and experimental films. His second feature film S*x and Violence (which he wrote, directed, and acted in) won the Audience Award and Best Directorial Debut at the New York International Indie Film and Video Festival. Zibell trained intensively with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar under the tutelage of Andre Gregory in the work of radical Director/Theorist Jerzy Grotowski. Much of the work formed the basis of his PhD dissertation in Performance Studies and media (UC Davis). Zibell is excited about collaborating on this film which deftly unsettles perceived separations between cinemas of fact and of fiction while exploring the story of US (anti-) hero and Darwin-award-winner “Lawn Chair” Larry Walters, a figure Zibell has been intrigued with since that day in July 1982 when Walters infamously launched himself skyward into the airspace of the Los Angeles International Airport.
