Biography

Jonathan Failla was born in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up on Long Island, where he developed an early love for the Atlantic Ocean and good pizza. He first got bit by the acting bug in high school drama club, when Sister Monica told him that his Walter Hollander made a severely depressed friend of hers laugh for the first time in years. That's when he realized that acting has the capacity to work wonders. He studied acting at SUNY Purchase with Joan Potter, a member of the Actor's Studio, who studied with Lee Strasberg and Eva Le Gallienne. On campus, he and fellow actor Brian Foyster founded the Purchase Underground Stage. He graduated in 1983 as valedictorian with a BFA in Theatre Arts and Film. For several years thereafter, he lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where he worked as a house painter during the day and acted in Off-Off-Broadway theatre productions at night. He then went on to be a set painter in the art departments of various film and television productions. In December 1988, he applied for a job sponsored by the US Embassy - an exhibition about film in America taking place in East Berlin. During that time period, he met theatre people from East Germany who adopted him into their "free theatre" group Theater Schlagersüß and invited him to direct them in an American play in East Berlin. The production, "Save the Pigs," by playwright Paul O'Donnell, had its premiere on May 1st, 1989 in the East German capital. A few months later, the Berlin Wall fell. Failla moved to Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin where, besides acting and directing theatre in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden, he single-handedly introduced East Berlin to pizza, by baking them in his squatted East German flat and selling them at all the new pop up bars in the recently freed city. It also assured him of a steady supply of New York style pizza. Many plays and many pizzas later, he met his wife Anja and moved to her home town of Magdeburg, Germany, where they started a family. There, Jonathan Failla founded Asyltheater/Theaterasyl, a theatre group that brought refugees and Magdeburg teenagers together in the theatre experience. During that period, he wrote and they performed three musicals. He speaks fluent German, loves to direct plays in German theaters and is known for his acting in German film and TV. He also works for DW TV in Berlin as an editor for the business, science and environment department. He is the author of the book "Kleine Hausapotheke English."
- IMDb mini biography by: Jonathan Failla