Jack J. Bennett

Jack was first bitten by the acting bug at 5 years old. At his kindergarten graduation program, he played Little Jack Horner where he "stuck in his thumb, pulled out a plum, and said 'What a good boy am I'". The sound of audience laughter at that moment was a sound that had him hooked for life. He continued doing as much theatre as he could throughout elementary and high school before entering the theatre program at UMKC in Kansas City, MO. A life-altering moment came just before the start of his second semester when his father died unexpectedly of a heart attack at 41. Jack was very close to his father and was severely rocked by the experience. The next year, Jack decided to go 500 miles away to college in Watertown, WI, to Maranatha Baptist Bible College. At Maranatha, he performed in 11 shows during 8 semesters, in addition to playing football and attending the occasional class. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Theatre Education - not that he ever intended to be a teacher. As he explains, the college was small enough that "as slow as I was, I could still play football", and they did not offer a performance degree in theatre, so he took the closest thing. After graduation he moved to Jacksonville, FL, and started figuring out how to be an actor. On-screen, he landed his first paid role as a pirate in a Laser Tag instructional video, for which he was ecstatic to be paid $100. His first professional stage work came at the Alhambra Dinner Theatre as Willum Cubbert in "The Nerd", cast in the same week he was hired as an emcee at a local comedy club. Even before getting married in 2002, Jack began making plans to move to Los Angeles. Although he was getting steady stage and on-camera acting work in the Florida market, he felt that he had hit a glass ceiling, and the need to move to the larger market was clear. Jack and his wife Gloria pulled into Los Angeles on his birthday in 2004. Jack has appeared on the live stage literally thousands of times throughout the years, both as an actor and stand-up comedian. As an actor, he has won numerous awards including a Best Actor/Season award for the role of Starbuck in The Rainmaker at Theatre Winter Haven. As a comedian, one of his favorite experiences was the opportunity to open for Larry the Cable Guy for a week. One of Jack's most important on-going projects is Young Stars Theatre, a non-profit theatre for youth performers that he co-founded and runs with his wife. YST is a community theatre project primarily for youth performers 18 and under. They have been operating this project continuously since 2000, first in Jacksonville, FL then in North Hollywood, CA, and since 2016, at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena CA.