Brian Lohmann

Brian is thrilled to be back in his home town and working with BATS, which he co-founded in 1986. He is grateful and proud to be part of this imaginative Bay Area institution. Brian began improvising in the late 1970s with the satirical revue, San Francisco Times. A fan of overcommitment, he had a parallel musical career with Acapella Gold &emdash; a Bay Area Jazz sextet that recorded with Tee Carson, hosted the Feather River Jazz Festival and was featured with Bobby McFerrin at the Berkeley Jazz Festival – all while he played bass with the jazz-Latin-funk band, Phases. His first success as a composer came for his score of the cabaret parody, Absolutely Courtney, which won a Drama-Logue award in the early 80s. While a member of the SOMA comedy group, Faultline, Brian created his lounge singer alter ego, Johnny Lonely, an act he has now inhabited for 35 years. Johnny crooned his original comic torch songs at Joe’s Pub, The Seattle Film Festival, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Paradise Lounge and in England, Australia, Germany, Paris and Amsterdam. Johnny also opened for Tenacious D at Largo in Los Angeles and was the supporting act for a tour with John Wesley Harding and The Love Hall Tryst. (Brian was a member of that acapella folk quartet and can be heard singing bass on their album of re-imagined 18th-century murder ballads.) He created the improv/scripted hybrid Pulp Playhouse (1988-95) which helped pioneer genre-based improvisation and feels very fortunate to count many BATS players among the Pulp Players. Since 2002, Brian has been a leadership and public persona development coach for the labor union, SEIU. He has been on the faculty of Pepperdine University, The Old Globe and A.C.T. and has been a guest teaching artist for many other schools and theaters. Other scripted theatre credits include three plays with Rita Rudner at The Laguna Playhouse, in addition to shows at A.C.T., Shakespeare Santa Cruz, The Magic Theater and Off-Broadway with Improbable. Brian spent the last 25 years in L.A. with Impro Theatre directing and improvising in L.A. Noir (Presidio Theater, Litquake, OSF), Tennessee Williams (Odyssey Theater/South Coast Rep), Dickens (Broad Stage/North Coast Rep) and Shakespeare (OSF Green Show, Pasadena Playhouse). Film and TV includes, He Was a Quiet Man, Jack, Thanks, Lifegame, Speechless and American Body Shop. You can find his album, “The One and Lonely, Johnny Lonely,” here: https://brianlohmann.bandcamp.com/album/the-one-and-lonely-johnny-lonely. Brian thanks his wife Kathleen and sons Django and Alistair for their love and support.