John Wills Martin

John Wills Martin is a long-time actor and acting coach who has directed for both film and stage, most recently directing Jonathan Sherman's St. Joan Van Ark starring Peter Dinklage at the Public Theater in New York. John worked as an assistant director at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles with writers Philip Kan Gotanda, Migdalia Cruz, Tony Kushner, Ariel Dorfman, and others. He was a professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Asia for several years, where he also piloted the acting program at the Singapore Center for Continuing Education. John’s screen credits include the upcoming THE THICKET starring Juliette Lewis, Levon Hawke, Peter Dinklage and Gbenga Akinnagbe, THE BELIEVER with Ryan Gosling, and Michael Almereyda's HAMLET with Sam Shepard and Kyle MacLachlan. His numerous stage credits include: Skin in Road by Jim Cartwright, Lord Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Jimmy in Mein Amerika by Matthew Weiss, and he also won an LA Weekly Critics award for The Greeks. He has taught six-week acting/directing workshops, concentrating on one writer, such as Sam Shepard, at the Paradise Factory in the East Village. John presently teaches Directing the Actor courses and the Directing the Actor Collaboration class with the Drama department for NYU’s Undergraduate Film Program; he also teaches Acting for the Camera classes for NYU’s Open Arts program. Previously he taught Actor’s Craft I and II, and Directing the Actor I, II and III for NYU’s Graduate Film program. John graduated from the American Film Institute’s Directing program and produced an Academy Award-winning short. He coaches actors for film in NYC and runs script workshops near his home in northwest Connecticut. John is proud to have studied with Harry Mastrogeorge, Judith Weston and Charlie Laughton.