Jon Stancato

Director and Voice Teacher in New York

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Lauded as "ingenious" by the New York Times, Jon is Co-Artistic Director of Stolen Chair, the 4-time Drama Desk-nominated theatre company he founded with his partner, Kiran Rikhye, in 2002. He has directed 15 original works for Stolen Chair, including their live silent film The Man Who Laughs and spoken-word opera Potion: A Play in 3 Cocktails. As a freelance director, his work was recently seen in London in The Ecstasy and the Ecstasy, an original work he devised with Royal Academy of Dramatic Art's MA Theatre Lab, where he regularly teaches extended voice, physical theatre, and devising. In addition to his course at RADA, he has taught at Yale, the European College of Liberal Arts (Berlin), Bard College, and Pace University, among others. His workshops reach over 1000 students and professionals each year, and Jon and Stolen Chair launched Theater Gym as a platform for this work, including the new semi-monthly "Sing a Secret" classes, Jon's free introduction to Inside Voice.

-Browse Jon's CV here-

Jon has trained with Thomas Richards & the Grotowski Workcenter, Richard Armstrong/Roy Hart voice, Joseph Chaikin, Anne Bogart & SITI Company, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Richard Armstrong, Antonio Fava, Chris Bayes, Roving Classical Commedia University, and the SF Mime Troupe, as well as in the techniques of Jacques Lecoq.

Jon is also the artistic director and master teacher of the CUNY/Creative Arts Team's NYC Student Shakespeare Festival, helping students devise original works of theatre using Shakespeare's text and then producing them Off-Broadway.

When not busy in the theatre or running his tutoring company, Jon enjoys climbing rocks, reading tarot, playing bass, and concocting cocktails and cuisine.

  • Education
    • BA (Theatre & Art History) from Swarthmore College, 2002