About Martha

MARTHA B. JOHNSON is a stage director, dramaturg, and playwright, who is a co-founder and Co-Artistic Director at Full Circle Theater. 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 has directed Glass & Lady M. and served as assistant director for Full Circle’s acclaimed production of Caught at the Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio directed by Rick Shiomi. 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. At Theater Mu, she developed and directed several plays including The Hand that Holds the String, Land of a Million Elephants, Grace, and Triangles. She’s also directed Stolen Generation at New Native Theater.

She was co-writer, dramaturg, and assistant director for FC’s 2015 premiere production Theater: A Sacred Passage. 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.

She began her Twin Cities career in the early 1980s as co-founder/co-artistic director of 21st Street Players, a small, experimental theater company, where she collaborated on new works by renowned poet Robert Bly and acclaimed Japanese Noh master 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. She was a director, teaching artist, and professor at Augsburg University from 1988 to 2014.

production photos

ANTIGONICK

365 DAYS/PLAYS

ANTIGONICK

Upcoming Direction

Photo Featuring:

Oogie_Push in the role of Antigone

May 16 - 28, 2023

At Mixed Blood Theatre

Minneapolis, Minnesota

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LADY M.

365 DAYS/PLAYS

ANTIGONICK

Concept and Direction

Pictured:

Marci Lucht

Photography by LKBachman

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365 DAYS/PLAYS

Concept and 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

365 DAYS/PLAYS

ANTIGONICK

LADY M.

365 DAYS/PLAYS

ANTIGONICK

365 DAYS/PLAYS

365 DAYS/PLAYS

365 DAYS/PLAYS

DIPPED IN LOVE

365 DAYS/PLAYS

365 DAYS/PLAYS

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