A native Hoosier, John has been acting and vocal coaching for as long as he can remember. After dabbling briefly in a career as a theatre critic, he fell in love with voice and speech while taking American Sign Language classes at Indiana University. Prior to joining the faculty at UM, he taught Voice and Speech at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond. He has vocal-coached productions for Indiana University, the Brown County Playhouse, the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richard Bland College, the University of Richmond, St. Lawrence University, Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne, Barksdale Theatre, and Theatre IV,  and those play credits include Guys and Dolls, Peter Pan, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Foreigner, Caught in the Net, Macbeth, Medea, The Three Sisters, The Rocky Horror Show, Boy Gets Girl, Orphans, and The Importance of Being Earnest. He is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association. His acting credits include Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado about Nothing, This is Our Youth, volume of smoke, and Visiting Mr. Green. John recently played Mitchell Green in the regional premiere of the Broadway hit The Little Dog Laughed at the Barksdale Theatre in Richmond, Virginia. In Missoula, he has worked alongside UM students and faculty in I Am Montana and Undone: A Doll’s House for Montana Rep Missoula. He has trained internationally with noted artists such as folk singer Frankie Armstrong and the Dah Theatre of Belgrade, Serbia. He is an active member of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Voice and Speech Trainers Association.  He is the winner of VASTA’s 2009 Clyde Vinson Memorial Scholarship; his essay "Getting the Gay Out: Sexual Identity in the Voice Classroom" was recently published in the "Voice and Gender" edition of the Voice and Speech Review. He recenlty directed a staged reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later for Montana Rep as the comapny was part of Tectonic Theatre Project's simulataneous worldwide premiere of the new play. John is currently preparing for his UM directorial debut—Tongue of a Bird will open in March 2010.
 

“All theatre must be performed with the immediate need to tell a story, as if each breath the actor takes could be his or her last. When I see a burning need on the stage, I have no choice but to pay attention. In the School of Theatre & Dance, our sequence of voice and speech training is designed to enrich the imaginative acting process and the need to speak. The discipline and presence cultivated by this intellectual and artistic regimen for the entire performance body will follow the student-actor wherever the future might take him or her.”