August 27, 2026

Playwright Jonathan Josephson is one of the co-creators of Wicked Lit and co-founders of Unbound Productions, as well as its current Artistic Director. More than forty of his plays have been produced outside of Unbound! Read on for more.

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Fifty-five of Jonathan’s plays have received over 800 performances at site-specific locations, schools, and theatres around the world including Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival), Milwaukee Rep (RepLab), the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play Festival (Festival Winner), Alternative Theatre Company (Altered Minds, Off-Broadway), Williamstown Theater Festival (Late Night Cabaret), Atlantic Theatre Company (Atlantic School), San Jose Rep (SJREAL), Warner Theatre (International Play Festival), Chance Theater, Short+Sweet Dublin (Best Playwright Award), and Short+Sweet: Hollywood (Judges’ Choice Award).

Jonathan has received three Individual Artist Awards from the Pasadena Arts Council, is a five-time Finalist for Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award, and has been named a Finalist for both the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the City Theatre National Short Play Award. His work has also been recognized by the William Inge Theatre Festival (Short Play Lab), Great Plains Theatre Conference (Short Play Lab), Smith and Kraus (Best 10-Minute Plays 2019, 2021 and 2022 and Best Monologues for Women in 2020), Heartland New Play Festival (Festival Winner), Force of Nature Productions (Best of Rush), Playground-LA (Best of Playground-LA), Stage It! 10-Minute Play Festival (Anthologies 3, 4 and 5), and numerous other festivals and awards programs.

Jonathan is a founder of Unbound Productions in Los Angeles and is one of the creators of the multi-award-winning immersive theatre events Wicked Lit, History Lit, and Mystery Lit which have welcomed over 30,000 patrons to site-specific locations throughout Southern California. Original plays and adaptations written for Unbound include The New Catacomb, The Chimes, a Goblin Story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Lurking Fear (wth Jeff G. Rack), Count Magnus, A Ghost Story, Las Lloronas, The Grove of Rashomon, Anansi and the Demons (Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery); The Garden Party and The Girl Who Owned a Bear (Pasadena Museum History); and Holmes, Sherlock, and The Consulting Detective (Los Angeles County Arboretum).

Jonathan is also a fiction writer. Select publications include “The Pain Critic” (Danse Macabre), “Jorge Hosts Chanukah” (Paragon Press), “The Monster is Confused” (novella excerpt: Zoetic Press; podcast: 4LPH4NUM3R1C), “Dark Druids and Their Dark Jars” (Masque and Spectacle), ‘Run, Peanut, Run” (London Writers Salon Magazine), and “Tall Grow the Bones” (Fabula Argentea).

Twenty-five of Jonathan’s plays are published by Concord Theatricals, Original Works Publishing, YouthPLAYS, and Applause Theatre and Cinema Books. He is Resident Playwright of PlayGround-LA, a proud member of the Colony Theatre Playwrights Lab, the Dramatists Guild of American, and a Lifetime Member of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights. B.A. in Theatre: Playwriting from UCSD. [jonathanjosephson.com]