Who We Are

Mondo Bizarro is a New Orleans based arts production company dedicated to the production and performance of original multi-disciplinary work. Our vision is to participate in the betterment of our community and the expansion of its consciousness while instilling the sentiments of fun, play, and imagination into a common public experience through the hosting, nurturing, and performing of the arts. We seek to bring together elements of regional, national and international arts with various community organizations and local citizens to create an understanding of what makes us commonly human and individually unique.

To date, our production credits include original work in theater, film, festival organizing, oral history, educational outreach and ensemble development. We also consistently perform in non-traditional venues such as historic Jackson Square in New Orleans, LA as a means of expanding the audience base for our creative endeavors. Though diverse in nature, all of our productions are linked by a strong desire to develop bold original works of art collaboratively. We combine expertise in collaborative ensemble theater creation, progressive education methodologies, community organizing, and arts production to encourage an open dialogue between human beings everywhere. Mondo Bizarro has presented original work in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, California, Kentucky, North Carolina, New York, Russia & England. We are active members of Alternate ROOTS and the Network of Ensemle Theaters.

Bruce France

Bruce France is the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Mondo Bizarro. After a great deal of continental travel throughout his youth, due to his father’s naval service, he settled down for a while in Baton Rouge, LA at Louisiana State University where he earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Performance Studies. His lessons and experiences there turned him on to the possibility for using performance as a means of generating discussion, ideas and activity in local and national communities to produce positive change. Bruce has a diverse production history working in both theater and film as a performer, writer, director, producer, cameraman and editor. The work he produces is varied in its form and content ranging from political satire, bizarre street theater, adaptations of poetry, literature and non-fiction, and documentary projects. Past stage and film credits include: Black Eyes, Invisible Man, Picture This, Contagion, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, On the Road, The Little Prince, The Irish Mafia, Batteries in the Killing Machine, The Far Country, The Hedgehog, The Bowel Movement, and Catching Him In Pieces. These days Bruce is keeping himself busy with full-time responsibilities for Mondo Bizarro including The I-10 Witness Project, grant writing, developing new artistic work, and UPROOTED: The Katrina Project-an upcoming community residency project sponsored by Alternate ROOTS.

Nick Slie

Nick Slie is Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Mondo Bizarro and the Director of Theater Studies at Nunez Community College in Chalmette, LA. He is an actor, director, writer, educator and community activist. Before co-founding Mondo Bizarro in 2003, Nick received his B.A. in performance studies from Louisiana State University. Upon completion of his degree, he accepted the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship and attended Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland where he received a Masters of Philosophy in Theater and Film. Nick’s performance work ranges from physical theater to contemporary dance, from multi-disciplinary solo work to collaborative ensemble productions. Recent performing arts experience includes: co-creator/performer for Mondo Bizarro’s Catching Him In Pieces, director/dramaturge for Alan Walter’s The Far Country, art direction and videographer for M.U.G.A.B.E.E’s Batteries in the Killing Machine, co-creator/performer for ArtSpot Productions Checkhov’s Wild Ride and co-creative director of Mondo Bizarro’s post-Katrina story collective The I-10 Witness Project (www.i10witness.org). Nick is also currently collaborating with Philadelphia based Olive Dance Theater on their next evening length work entitled Brotherly Love. He serves on the Executive Comittee for Alternate ROOTS and is a member of the Network of Ensemble Theaters.