Jesse Bonnell
Los Angeles, CA
Jesse Bonnell is a writer and director, and a co-founder of Poor Dog Group, a collective dedicated to contemporary theater. Nationally, his work has been shown at REDCAT, The Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, RADAR L.A., South Coast Repertory, The Getty Villa, EMPAC, The Collapsible Hole, Baruch Performing Arts Center and site-specific locations. Abroad, his work has toured throughout Eastern Europe including Croatia, Poland and Serbia. He has received project support from Theater Communications Group, Foundation for Contemporary Art, United States Embassy Belgrade and Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and a Cultural Exchange International Grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Jesse was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and residencies at UCLA Hothouse, CalArts and Yaddo. Recently he was in residency at Headlands Center for the Arts and this year will be in residency at The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
From the Journal
- Jesse Bonnell’s Theater Group Experiments with Group Therapy Sessions November 29, 2017
Group Therapy
Jesse Bonnell is a writer and director, and a co-founder of Poor Dog Group, a collective dedicated to contemporary theater.
Artist BioJesse Bonnell and Poor Dog Group’s latest project, Group Therapy, is a living documentary performance work centered on the inner workings of Poor Dog Group as they commit to clinical therapy. Drawing on audio recordings of 16 hours of real therapy, Group Therapy will combine reenacted moments from the group’s therapy and extemporaneous confrontations. Having met when they were eighteen years old, Poor Dog Group has now been making art together for over a decade. Group Therapy probes the inner workings of this long term collaboration and close-knit group of friends as they process their marriages, divorces, falling outs, alcoholism, the hustle of making art together, and above all, what it is like to endure it all.
From the Journal
Does the US need one big group therapy session? Jesse Bonnell and Poor Dog Group, experiment with that idea by working with a therapist to confront some of today’s most challenging questions in their Creative Capital Project, Group Therapy. Premiering Jan 11-13, 2018 at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, the new theater piece draws on 16 hours of audio recordings from the group’s actual therapy sessions with a licensed professional to examine their long-term collaboration, and how their relationship has progressed through marriages, divorces, disagreements, alcoholism, and the struggle of being professional artists.