John Gentile

John Gentile (Professor)

Ph.D. Performance Studies, Northwestern University
M.A. Mythological Studies, Pacifica Graduate Institute
M.A. Performance Studies, Northwestern University
B.A. Dramatic Arts and English, State University of New York Geneseo Areas of Emphasis: Solo Performance; Performance History; Chautauqua Movement; Storytelling; Myth; Adapting Literary and Folkloric Texts for the Stage

John S. Gentile, Professor, (Ph.D. and M.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University; M.A. in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute; B.A. in Dramatic Arts and English from S.U.N.Y. Geneseo) served on the faculty of the University of Northern Iowa before assuming a faculty appointment at Kennesaw State University.

John Gentile's theatre credits include his original adaptations of major works of folk and literary narrative such as: Over Nine Waves: Myths of Ancient Ireland, Jack of Beech Mountain: Folktales from Southern Appalachia, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told-Tales, The Bell Witch and Other Legends: Ghostly Stories from the American South, American Gothic: Stories by American Masters of the Macabre, Ovidâ's Metamorphoses, Redwing: Voices from 1888, Dark Forest: Tales and Poems from the Brothers Grimm, The Hero's Journey: Mythic Stories of the Heroic Quest (which was featured as a plenary session at the international Mythic Journeys conference celebrating the centennial of Joseph Campbell's birth) and Red Hanrahan (which toured to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival). His adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was presented at the Casablanca Theatre Festival in 2009, where it won the major award for Best Performance. Moby-Dick was re-staged for an experimental immersion production by Saiah Arts International at the Lifecyle Building Center in Atlanta in the spring of 2013 and was named Best Play by Creative Loafing and earned a nomination for the Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award from Atlanta's Suzi Awards. His most recent theatrical adaptations are The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which was produced at Kennesaw State University during the 2015-16 KSU Season, and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which was produced at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, where it enjoyed a sold-out run in December 2015. He is currently working on a new version of his adaptation of Moby-Dick for Smock Alley Theatre's 2017 season.

As an actor and storyteller, Gentile has performed throughout the metro-Atlanta area. He has performed at the C. G. Jung Society of Atlanta, Theatre Gael, the Roswell Magnolia Storytelling Festival, the Winter Storytelling Festival, Theatre in the Square, and 7 Stages. The City of Roswell presented him with The President's Award in 1999 for his service to the community in establishing the annual Roswell Magnolia Storytelling Festival. He has led study/tours to Ireland's mythic and early sacred sites and currently serves as the faculty director for the summer study abroad program Acting in Irish Drama in partnership with the Gaiety School of Acting, the National Theatre School of Ireland. Gentile has served as a scholar-performer with the Wyoming Chautauqua, Rocky Mountain Chautauqua and Tulsa Chautauqua public humanities programs. In 2003, he received the Distinguished Teaching Award and Distinguished Research and Creative Activity Award from the College of the Arts at Kennesaw State University. In 2004, he received the College of the Arts Distinguished Research and Creative Activity Award for a second time and was named a finalist for the University's Distinguished Research and Creative Activity Award. In 2010, he received the University's Foundation Prize for his adaptation of Moby-Dick. In 2011, he received the National Storytelling Network's Oracle Award for the Southeast Region for Leadership and Service in Storytelling.

Gentile is the author of Cast of One: One-Person Shows from the Chautauqua Platform to the Broadway Stage (University of Illinois Press), a history of American solo performance. His articles have appeared in Text and Performance Quarterly, Studies in Popular Culture, On the Culture of the American South, The Future of Performance Studies: Visions and Revisions, Storytelling, Self, Society, Queers in American Popular Culture, and Eighteenth-Century British and American Rhetorics and Rhetoricians. He has presented his research at conferences for the National Communication Association, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Chautauqua Network, Popular Culture Association, Performance Studies International, Southeastern Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, American Humanists Association, Southeastern Theatre Conference, Georgia Communication Association, and has served as the keynote speaker and performer at national performance festivals. He has served on the executive boards of the Performance Studies Division of the National Communication Association, Storytelling in Higher Education Special Interest Group of the National Storytelling Network, Southern Order of Storytellers, and on the faculty for the Leadership Institute of the Executive M.B.A. Program at the University of Chicago. He is the founding co-editor with Joseph Sobol of Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies, for which he currently serves as the book reviews editor and served as the guest editor of that journal's 2011 special issue on Storytelling and Myth. He is an associate editor of the National Communication Association journal Text and Performance Quarterly. His most recent publication, Shape-Shifter in the Green: Performing Sir Gawain and Green Knight appears in Storytelling, Self, Society.

Gentile teaches classes at Kennesaw State University in performing literature, storytelling, performance art, and adapting literary texts for the stage, which is his area of emphasis as an artist, and he developed the department's distinctive curriculum in storytelling studies. Additionally, Gentile served for twelve years as chair of the department. Under his leadership, the department's student enrollment more than tripled, the number of its faculty more than doubled, and its innovative curriculum and ambitious production season recognized for excellence. During his term as chair, the department opened the Onyx Theatre, the first new theatre space at the University in twenty years. Gentile moved the department from one focused on solely on drama to a broader vision that integrates theatre and performance studies approaches and that emphasizes a wide range of performance styles and texts. His vision established the department's mission to nurture scholar-artists, students and faculty whose accomplishments reflect achievement as both creative artists and articulate, informed scholars of their chosen area of emphasis.