Biography
John Benitz wrote and directed the award-winning film Children of the Struggle, which was shown in film festivals across the country, on PBS, and is seen in high schools and colleges nationwide. It was also recognized by the NAACP Film Commission for its "true and poignant portrayal of the fight for black voting rights".
In addition, he has directed the West Coast premieres of Borderlands by Mona Kopellman, an original play about Bosnia, which was a Best Pick in the LA Weekly and the Off-Broadway play Fortune's Fools at the McCadden Theater in Hollywood, also an LA Weekly Best Pick and for which he won a Dramalogue Award. He directed One Grimm Evening at the Odyssey Theatre as well as What I Heard About Iraq by Simon Levy, which performed on college campuses, in theaters and performing arts centers in New York, California, Washington State, Montreal and at the LaMama Theatre in Manhattan.
He has acted Off-B'way at the former Ubu Rep, at the Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago, The Odyssey and Fountain Theatres' in Los Angeles and Shakespeare Orange County. He's a proud member of Actor's Equity and SAG/AFTRA.
In 2007, John approached Andrew Carroll about the possibility of a play based on Carroll's New York Times best-selling books War Letters and Behind the Lines. He was awarded a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts and a Cal Humanities grant to bring If All the Sky Were Paper to a wider audience. Since then the play has performed at Seattle Rep, The Martha's Vineyard Playhouse, the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles, and the Kennedy Center in DC. Annette Bening, Common, Laura Dern, Mary Steenburgen, Gary Cole, Dan Lauria, Lauren Bowles, Peter Strauss, Sandra Seacat, and Ed Asner are just a few of the actors he has had the pleasure to direct as part of this play.
He attended Sarah Lawrence College and Brandeis University for his MFA and is a Full Professor at Chapman University.
John is in production on a feature-length film about the war letters project.
