About me
For more than 45 years, Jonathan Deull has been a show business maid-of-all-work, serving as a producer, designer, stage manager, technical supervisor, rigger, and educator with theatrical and musical productions, circuses, and special events around the United States and internationally, including the Kennedy Center, The White House, the Smithsonian Institution, The Big Apple Circus, Omnium Circus, and touring Broadway shows.
Since 1997 he has been deeply engaged in the study and practice of rigging and risk management for live entertainment, with a particular emphasis on aerial performer rigging for circus, aerial dance, and theatre. His work includes design and execution of rigging systems and productions in the USA and internationally. He is an ETCP Certified Rigger (Theatre), and an ETCP Recognized Trainer. He serves as a voting member of the ESTA Rigging Working Group that formulates rigging standards for the entertainment industry, and as a founding Safety Committee Member for the American Circus Educators Association, where he helped lead the effort to develop guidelines and protocols for circus performance training programs and facilities. He has created and led professional-level workshops and training programs for performing arts riggers, as well as rigging familiarity training for performers, directors, choreographers, and technical personnel. He has taught for universities, production organizations, circus schools, IATSE locals, and other venues around the USA and abroad. He co-led the Jay Glerum Rigging Master Class on several occasions, and in 2018 undertook an extended engagement in Hangzhou, China as rigging trainer for Cirque du Soleil. He has presented at workshops on rigging and other subjects at LDI, USITT, AYCO and other industry gatherings, and he authored the chapter on rigging for the seminal book, Aerial Dance, by Jayne Bernasconi and Nancy Smith.
He is a proud more-than-40-year member of IATSE Local 329, and serves as Executive Vice President of Clark Transfer, the Pennsylvania-based theatrical transportation and logistics company started by his grandfather, Whitey Molitch. Trained as a theatrical director and designer with a degree from Wesleyan University (1979), he also has a law degree from The George Washington University (1984), is a licensed member (retired) of the New York Bar, and an FAA-licensed commercial airplane pilot. Lately, he is learning to play the cello. He lives with his wife, Sheryl Sturges, in Cornwall, New York, and is grandfather to Jack and Lyam.
