Group Therapy


Jesse Bonnell is a writer and director, and a co-founder of Poor Dog Group, a collective dedicated to contemporary theater.

Artist Bio

Jesse 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.


Discipline
Performance Art
Award Year
2013
Status

Completed

Jesse Bonnell

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.