His Story
Johnny began his professional career in 1972, working around the British theatrical scene with giants such as Lindsay Kemp, David Aukin, Nancy Meckler, Pip Simmonds, Peter Oliver, Jeff Nuttal, Emile Wolk, Nigel Terry, Mike Figgis, Mark Long, Annie Stainer and many others. Until 1977 he was performer-director of clown-theatre company Salakta Balloon Band, and subsequently, and until 1979 founder and perfomer-director of the renowned Kaboodle Theatre.
However, it was in 1978, when he began his career as a solo artist in the Festival of Fools in Amsterdam, in his first solo performance COME AGAIN that his career flourished. This was followed by TROUBLESHOOTER in 1980, MEMBERS ONLY in 1982, DIRTY MONEY in 1986 and EUROPEAN BLUES in 1988. All of theses shows reached approximately one million viewers over the years in more than forty countries.
Since the year 2000 he has been performing including 2025 THE BEST OF JOHNNY at European festivals in Germany, Holland, Austria, Denmark, France, Sweden, Italy, in the GINZA THEATRE, Tokyo, Japan, Slava Polunin’s CONGRESS OF FOOLS in Moscow, Russia, in Quebec and (performing twice at the prestigious Just for Laughs festival in Montreal) and the United States, His popularity as a mime and clown was so much so that in 1987 Bent Blindbaek organised a Johnny Melville Retro Festival, in Aarhus, Denmark where over ten days in which he performed two nights of each of his five solo shows listed above, plus a gala cabaret with invited artists who had appeared in various State funded special projects like IT DON’T MEAN A THING (Germany) & MAGICAL MONKS / VOTE BARONI (Italy)
Melville also has alternated his talents as clown and mime with acting in short films, feature films, TV series in various countries (mostly in the circuit of art-house cinema), and in the world of music, collaborating twice with Swiss techno-group Yello in 1988.
As an actor he has worked under the direction of names such as Alex de la Iglesia, Vanna Paoli, Dieter Meier, Antonio Chavarrías, Mario Orfini among many others. In 2001 he won the award for best actor at the Brooklyn Film Festival of New York for the film NO MAN’S LAND directed by Nina Rosenmeier along with other film awards.
In recent years he has combined his performances and training workshops of mime, physical theatre and clown with direction and script writing, in addition to extensive schedules at clown festivals in Latin America, visiting with some frequency, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and Chile.