Mr. Janusz Dehone is an actor, director and theatre practitioner. He is famous for developing a no-nonsense approach to acting instruction, known as the Dehone method. He is also a co-founder of the Acthole platform for performing arts. Although he's been decorated with multiple titles such as Professeur, Privatdozent and Honorary Fellow, he still prefers to be addressed as Mister.

Mr. Dehone was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in August 21st, 1968. He was raised by his mother Agnieszka and his grandmother Maria. Polish-born Maria was a first cousin of Lee Strasberg (who later became famous in his own right) and a ticket vendor in the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre. There she got acquainted with the theatre founder and artistic director Konstantin Stanislavski. In 1938 they had a brief but passionate encounter during which Mr. Stanislavski sadly passed away. The next year, Agnieszka was born.

Agnieszka began studies in the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet at the age of 11. After eight years of training she graduated and was offered a contract in Marinsky Ballet, Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). There she quickly rose to the position of prima ballerina, a position she held for many years. She even danced The Nutcracker eight months pregnant.

After her career in ballet, Agnieszka performed opera (mezzo-soprano) in the Lithuanian National Opera until the end of her life. She died on stage in 1991 from a heart attack at the end of Habanera in Carmen. Her death was only noticed fifteen minutes later when the standing ovation she received for her performance began to settle.

Although Mr. Dehone grew up without a father, he and his mother often got support and gifts from a fellow Marinsky Ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov until his defection to the United States in 1974.

Mr. Dehone has been influenced by the performing arts from very early on in his life. He practically grew up in ballet theatre. His grandmother Maria read the theories of Konstantin Stanislavski and his student Michael Chekov to him as bedtime stories. As a child he already performed in fairy tales in the Bryantsev Youth Theatre and later in the Alexandrinsky Theatre as an extra. He is still the youngest student ever to be granted a place to study in Russian State Institute of Performing Arts in 1980.

At the end of 1981, Mr. Dehone moved to Poland for a year as an exchange student in National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków. During that time he also had a chance to work with Jerzy Grotowski in his famous Laboratory Theatre. After five years of gruelling studies, Mr. Dehone graduated from the Institute of Performing Arts in 1985. After being courted for a couple of years by several prominent theatres in the Soviet Union, he chose Maly Theatre in Moscow and began work there as an actor.

During the season 1985–1986, Mr. Dehone appeared in no fewer than seven drama plays, including four strong lead parts (Treplyov in The Seagull, Peer Gynt, Othello and Hedda Gabler). After his first year in Maly, which Mr. Dehone refers to as "my second and the realest drama school", he was exhausted and depressed. His grandmother Maria had died earlier in 1986 and his mother Agnieszka had moved to Vilnius for good, having retired from ballet at the age of 45.

Mr. Dehone was only eighteen years old when he decided to leave everything behind. He took a leave of absence (still effective) from the Maly Theatre and left the Soviet Union. After the last performance of Peer Gynt he boarded the first possible Trans-Siberian at Yaroslavsky Vokzal and rode the train to Beijing.

For the next three years, he travelled the Far East studying and absorbing the theatre traditions and practices of China, India and Bali. He also taught the Western style of performing throughout his travels. During his time in the East, he learned the ways of Buddhist meditation practices. All these experiences have played a part in the development of the Dehone method.

In August 1989, Mr. Dehone returned to Europe and finally found himself in East Berlin. There he joined the Volksbühne theatre for a while to play the lead in Woyzeck. Mr. Dehone, unknown in Europe at the time, was unanimously praised for the part and rocketed to fame.

People say that after seeing Mr. Dehone play Woyzeck in Berlin, Klaus Kinski quit acting saying he had nothing to offer anymore. Although the Volksbühne Woyzeck was a phenomenon and a huge success, the play was cancelled in the turmoil following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.

Throughout the nineties, Mr. Dehone was a sought out actor in Europe. He played in theatres in Germany, France and Austria. He got a thorough induction in the Shakespearean tradition during the mid-nineties in London, where he played Macbeth in Macbeth, Iago in Othello and Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Ophelia in a production of Hamlet, all in a year and a half’s time.

At the same time he also acted in films, mainly art films and mostly in supporting roles. His biggest and most memorable part was probably the lead in Michelangelo Antonioni’s lesser known short film “Uomo all'ombra del mattino" (1997), which after much ado, never saw the light of day.

In 1998, just before his 30th birthday, his brief stint in Internationaal Theater Amsterdam ended in controversy. In the middle of the second showing of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, where Mr. Dehone played Vladimir, he grew unbearably restless. His uneasiness increased to the point that he had to leave the theatre at once, never to return. Only once has Mr. Dehone spoken about the incident: "The Abyss saw me". He has not appeared on stage since.

Having also taught acting the whole time, he decided to commit himself fully to teaching and directing theatre. He started his "directing spree", as he calls it, in the remote corner of Europe, in Finland. There he directed three high-profile plays that were enormous successes (Oedipus, a nude rendition of Hamlet and Franz Kafka’s The Trial for children). In time, these productions changed the theatre aesthetics of this small Nordic country for good.

The noughties saw Mr. Dehone directing many triumphant theatre productions in the Baltics, Eastern Europe and Germany. Eventually his work caught the eye of Off-Off-Broadway. He was invited to write and direct a play for the Malum Theatre in New York. In October 2007, following eight months of rehearsing, a play called Humankind finally premiered. Right after the opening night, the theatre building was destroyed by fire in a suspected arson. No charges were pressed, and the play was cancelled.

Since 2008, Mr. Dehone has focused solely on teaching. He coaches actors and other professionals in the performing arts. His Dehone method is widely regarded as one of the most effective training tools available for the modern actor.