Leonard Manzella, Playwright – Professional Bio

From 1968 to 1983, Leonard Manzella lived in Italy and worked as an actor in the Italian film industry.  His career as a leading man spanned over thirty films, with actors such as Marcello Mastroianni, James Mason, Harvey Keitel, Laura Antonelli, Rossano Brazzi, Joseph Cotten, Woody Strode, Farrah Fawcett, Henry Silva, Lorne Green and Klaus Kinski.  Filming took him around the world, sparking his interest in the cross-cultural issues that affect human behavior and how some cultures appear to be more violent than others.

Manzella returned to the U.S. in 1983 and trained as a psychodramatist under the tutelage of renowned psychologist-criminologist, Dr. Lewis Yablonsky.  He returned to Italy with Yablonsky in 1984, funded by the Vatican to pilot an experimental program teaching recovering heroin addicts the benefits of using psychodrama to beat their addictions. Inspired by that work, he went on to earn a master’s degree in social work from USC in 1989 and has been a practicing psychotherapist ever since.

From 1991 to 1994, Manzella directed a psychodrama program at Charter hospital in Thousand Oaks, where he treated men, women and children for a variety of conditions, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, domestic violence and child abuse.  In 1997, Manzella directed a psychodrama program at the San Luis Obispo County Jail, where he became well-known for his work treating substance abuse among inmates.  In 1999, he designed and directed the AVERT project, an emotional intelligence program aimed at teaching correctional officers empathy to avert institutional violence.  Over the next decade, he produced and directed three documentary training films based on his efforts to curtail abuses of power in schools, homeless shelters, correctional facilities and departments of social services.  In 2003, he contracted with the California Department of Corrections and began working with mentally ill inmates at state prisons, where he gained a deeper understanding of the dynamics of violence within our correctional systems.

Manzella’s latest endeavor, this time as an emerging playwright, is CAGES, based on his work treating mentally ill inmates held in Administrative Segregation at a California state prison.

Manzella extends special thanks to Ben Guillory, Aaron Henne, Dylan Southard and all the members of the Robey Theatre Playwrights Lab for their input and steadfast creative support in the development of CAGES.