a b o u t

John Paulsen moved to Seattle from a farm in Iowa. He has been performing on stage and in film. John is a writer, actor, director, teacher, and solo performer.

John's original solo show "Doolymoog" has been presented at Theatre off Jackson in Seattle, the Victoria, B.C Fringe Festival, Pure Theatre in Charleston, S.C and HERE Arts Center in New York City.

On film John has appeared alongside Zach Galifianakis as Steve in the "Visioneers". He also starred as Mr. Hands in the film"Zoo" which was presented at the 2007 Sundance and Cannes film festivals and was recently designated as one of the top 25 American independent films of the decade by Filmmaker magazine.

His background includes study at Freehold Theatre with Robin Lynn Smith and Toni Pasqualini, study in Meyerhold Biomechanics with George Lewis, and master classes with the Peter Brooke Company.

For many years John worked with Johnny Klein as one of "The Johns" creating original works such as, Laughs and Claps, Los Angeles, Truck Stop, and Lucky Sorrow, many of which were performed for Printer's Devil Theatre.
Working with the Rachel Rosenthal Company, John performed in the 2000 Bald Ambition Festival in Los Angeles. In 2004, John presented Eggs and Toast, an original movement piece created with Jessica Jobaris, at Dances for a Small Stage in Vancouver, B.C.

With Jobaris and George Lewis, John founded threeCompany, a movement theatre group. The company's first work, Door Stories was presented at The East Hall Theatre in April of 2006.

Two of John's original works have been made into short films: Greg, an excerpt from Doolymoog and Eggs and Toast, both directed by Vincent Ruiz. Eggs and Toast was presented at Northwest Film Forum in their Dance on Film series.

John's approach to solo theatre is not to stand and tell stories about himself, but to engage the audience through exciting physicality, imaginative use of props and space and an ever-surprising change of location, story and character. John's work combines elements of dance, characterization, story telling and clowning, together with sheer imaginative whimsy fashioning his own brand of physical theatre that winks towards the ironic.