About
Jon worked at the Los Angeles LGBT Center with homeless youth for ten years. For twenty-four years, he served as the artistic director of the Center’s award-winning Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center. He received the 2020 LA Stage Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award.
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The LGBT Center’s theater program, which Jon created, has produced more than 350 events. Highlights include the West Coast premiere of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and three official 25th anniversary productions: Jack Heifner’s Vanities (starring Kathy Bates); Jane Chambers’ lesbian classic, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove; and an all-star staged reading of Larry Kramer’s incendiary AIDS drama, The Normal Heart, Starring Lisa Kudrow and directed by Joel Grey. Jon also produced the debuts of new shows by Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin, Alec Mapa, Jenifer Lewis, Carol Channing, as well as the world premieres of Victory Dance (Ovation Award nomination), by Jessica Litwak; Patricia Cotter and Lori Scarlet’s Ovation, Garland, and LA Drama Critics Circle Award-winning musical, The Break Up Notebook: The Lesbian Musical; The multi award winning production of The Lost Plays of Tennessee Williams; the Ovation-nominated Miss Coco Peru Is Undaunted; Adelina Anthony’s Bruising for Besos; The Sonneteer, by Nick Salamone; Ike Holter’s Exit Strategy, and the award-winning adaptations of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Alexandra Billings’ S/He & Me, and Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love.
His prolific collaborations with director Ken Sawyer yielded many award winning productions including the following: the highly acclaimed revival of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap; Tectonic Theater Project’s The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later; Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?; the multiple award-winning Hit the Wall, by Ike Holter; HAM! by Sam Harris; the first authorized version of Jane Wagner’s iconic play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe: Revisited, staged with a full cast; and trans comedian/performance artist D'Lo's autobiographical solo show D'Funct.
Jon also produced Conversations with Coco, in which Miss Coco Peru conducted onstage interviews with such legendary performers as Bea Arthur, Charles Bush, Allison Janney, Jane Fonda, Lanie Kazan, Liza Minelli, Lily Tomlin, and Lesley Ann Warren. He also assisted Ms.Tomlin with writing sketch comedy for three of the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Anniversary
Galas, which he also produced.
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Jon’s productions for the Center were honored with the 2015-16 Ovation Awards for Best Musical: HAM! and the highest award, for Best Season. The following year his work was honored by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle with their Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre. During his tenure, the Center received 199 awards, 76 additional nominations, 19 LA Times Critics Choices or Best Bests, and 48 Picks of the Week in the LA Weekly.
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Music is his obsession, swimming is his happy place, and running the bases to home at Yankee stadium is his dream..
Jon Imparato began his writing career with Logically Affirmative, a fifteen-minute monologue performed live for the Pacific Dance Ensemble. Jon has written his first novel The Good Inside the Grief, a collection of personal memoir essays. He has had three essays from this forthcoming book published. The Shaving Cart, a humorous yet heartbreaking account of caring for men during the AIDS crisis, was the recipient of the prestigious Sherman Hewitt Award for First Place Non Fiction. You Had Me at Afghanistan was published in the literary journal The Wrath-Bearing a Tree. The essay was also chosen to be part of Voices from Afghanistan, a live staged reading designed to amplify Afghan stories. The third, Vagina Warrior, was published in the literary journal Lowestoft Chronicle. He is currently working on his first young adult novel Think Pink. It is the story of two best friends, one a transgender and one a nonbinary sixteen-year-old teenager out to save the environment.
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Awards
The Sherman Hewitt Award: First Place Non-Fiction
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The Lifetime Achievement award for excellence in theater from the LA Stage Alliance
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Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre
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City of West Hollywood Leadership Acknowledgment.
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19 LA Times Critics Choices or Best Bets
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48 Picks of the Week in the LA Weekly
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Playwrights' Arena Community Partner Award
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