Raised to be a cowboy, John fled his family's horse-drawn dreams and headed to San Francisco to pursue a career in theater. Trained at San Francisco State University, John was a founding member of both Reflex Action Theater and the legendary Z Collective. While in SF he appeared in over 30 productions at Berkeley Rep, Magic Theatre, Shakespeare in the Park, Asian American Theatre, and others, including two seasons in Europe with SF's Word for Word performance troupe. While in college he briefly considered a career in Genetic Research until a little math problem in one of his labs convinced him this was not to be.