About Martha

MARTHA B. JOHNSON (she, her) is a stage director, dramaturg, and playwright and is a co-founder of Full Circle Theater, where she served Full Circle's Co-Artistic Director from 2014 - 2022 and as Core Artist from 2014 - 2024.

She’s directed 40+ theater productions over her career in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) and is a longtime collaborator with Full Circle Co-Artistic Director Rick Shiomi, both at Full Circle and at Theater Mu, where she was a Co-Founder and served as a Core Artist Group member for 21 years.

At Full Circle she directed Anne Carson/Sophokles' Antigonick, and Glass & Lady M. She provided the original vision and staging concept for Full Circle’s 2017 production, 365 Days/365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks: A 2017 Remix, at Penumbra Theater, and directed 16 of the 46 short plays selected.

She served as assistant director for Full Circle’s acclaimed production of Caught at the Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio directed by Rick Shiomi. She was co-writer, dramaturg, and assistant director for Full Circle’s 2015 premiere production Theater: A Sacred Passage.

At Theater Mu, she developed and directed several movement-based theater pieces featuring personal narrative, including The Hand that Holds the String, Land of a Million Elephants, Grace, and Triangles.

At New Native Theater, she directed Stolen Generation, by playwright Ardie Medina, in 2016.

In fall 2019 her play Dipped in Love was co-produced by Full Circle and Theater KinderSpace in Tokyo, with a Japanese translation by Momoko Tanno.

Martha began her Twin Cities career in the early 1980s as co-founder/co-artistic director of 21st Street Players, an experimental, innovative theater company, where she collaborated on new works by renowned poet Robert Bly and prominent Japanese Noh actor Akira Matsui.

She holds a Ph.D. in theater from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she specialized in ancient Greek, traditional Japanese, and experimental European theater, and studied for some years under A.C. Scott in his pioneer Asian Experimental Theater Program. She was a director, teaching artist, and professor at Augsburg University from 1988 to 2014.

production photos

ANTIGONICK

Direction

Dramaturgy

Pictured:

Oogie_Push

May 16 - 28, 2023

At Mixed Blood Theatre

Minneapolis, Minnesota

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LADY M.

Concept and Direction

Pictured:

Marci Lucht

Photography by LKBachman

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365 DAYS/PLAYS

Original Staging Concept

Direction of 16 Plays

"The Light at the End of the Tunnel"

Pictured: Siddeeqah Shabazz, Marcos Lopez, Ashawnti Sakina Ford

Photography LKBachman

DIPPED IN LOVE

365 DAYS/PLAYS

Playwright

Pictured:

Naoko Sakakibara and Asako Fukamachi

Direction:

Kazuki Harada

KinderSpace Theater, Tokyo

About Martha

production photos

ANTIGONICK

LADY M.

365 DAYS/PLAYS

365 DAYS/PLAYS

DIPPED IN LOVE

365 DAYS/PLAYS

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