Martha Bancroft Johnson

Martha Bancroft JohnsonMartha Bancroft JohnsonMartha Bancroft Johnson
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Martha Bancroft Johnson

Martha Bancroft JohnsonMartha Bancroft JohnsonMartha Bancroft Johnson
  • Home
  • About
  • Resume
  • Productions
    • Antigonick
    • Glass & Lady M.
  • Contact Us

RESUME

Martha B. Johnson


ARTISTIC LEADERSHIP

Minneapolis / Saint Paul, Minnesota

   

  • Full Circle Theater Company, Co-Artistic Director, Co-founder, Core Artist Leadership Group, 2014 - present  


  • Theater Mu, Co-founder and Core Artistic Group, 1992 – 2013   


  • 21st Street Players, Co-Artistic Director, Co-founder, Core Artist, 1981-86


STAGE DIRECTOR


At Full Circle Theater: 

  • Glass and Lady M., Glass by Lindsey Bushnell and Lady M. by Martha B. Johnson, recording streamed virtually at the 2021 Minnesota Fringe Festival.  
  • Atacama by Augusto Federico Amador, staging of the first two scenes for public streaming, 2021. 
  • Glass and Lady M., Full Circle Theater production at Dreamland Arts, Minnesota 2019 Fringe Festival; received a Broadway World nomination for best original/new work. 
  • 365 Days/Plays by Suzan Lori-Parks: a 2017 Remix, provided the overall vision and staging concept and directed 16 of its 46 short plays, produced at Penumbra Theater, 2017.  
  • Assistant directed Caught by Christopher Chen at the Guthrie Theater Dowling Studio in 2019 and Theater: A Sacred Passage at Dreamland Arts in 2015, both directed by Rick Shiomi. 


At New Native Theater: 

  • Stolen Generation, by Ardie Medina, produced in Minneapolis and toured to various Native American Reservations and Communities in the upper Midwest, 2016

Right: Alice McGlave, Charla Marie Bailey, Oogie_Push, Marci Lucht: Glass & Lady M.

At Theater Mu: 

  • The Hand that Holds the String, Director; produced at the Southern theater; developed from the personal narratives of four women who’d emigrated from India to the U.S. 
  • Land of a Million Elephants, Director, Dramaturg; produced at Ordway’s McKnight Theater, based on the personal narrative of Pong Suryaday, Laotian immigrant and classical dancer 
  • Grace, Director, Playwright/Dramaturg; produced at Theatre de la Jeune Lune
  • Triangles, Director, Playwright/Dramaturg; produced by Theater Mu at the Southern Theater and selected by Walker Art Center for its Out There Series 


Assistant Stage Direction at Theater Mu, with Rick Shiomi (Director): 

  • A Little Night Music, Park Square Theater, 2014 
  • The Mikado (re-envisioned), co-produced by Sklylark Opera, E. M. Pearson Theater, 2013 
  • Yellow Fever at the Dowling Studio, the Guthrie Theater, 2013 
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Southern Theater, 2006

Ranee Ramaswamy, Veena Deo, Mithu Mukherjee-Schwartz, Santwana Dasgupta: Hand that Holds the String

PLAYWRIGHT/DRAMATURG  


  • Dipped in Love, Playwright; Japanese translation by Momoko Tanno, co-produced in Tokyo by KinderSpace Theater and Full Circle theater, September 2019, directed by Kazuki Haraka 
  • Theater a Sacred Passage, Co-writer and dramaturg, produced by Full Circle Theater, 2015 
  • Dancing with Demons, Co-writer/Performer, with Iris Shiraishi; staged reading presented by Mu Performing Arts, Dreamland Arts, 2009 New Eyes Festival, exploring personal demons holding women back in the professional theater world. 
  • Dipped in Love, Playwright; produced by Mu Performing Arts at Mixed Blood Theater for the New Directions Festival, 2007; and subsequently for the Minnesota Fringe Festival, 2008; directed by Jennifer Weir 
  • Floating Mothers, Co-writer/Performer; produced at The Playwrights’ Center, with Darcey Engen, based on our personal narratives as mothers, 2005 
  • The Hand that Holds the String, Co-creator, dramaturg; by Ranee Ramaswamy, Mithu Mukherjee-Schwartz, Veena Deo, and Santwana DasGupta; co-produced by Mu Performing Arts, 1997  
  • World of Glass, co-conceiver, co-artistic director; an adaptation of Spenser's Faerie Queene, Southern Theatre; choreographed by Ranee Ramaswamy, 1994 
  • Hoichi, a collaboration with Japanese Noh master actor Akira Matsui (with English script by Dorothea Jensen), dramaturg, and performer, commissioned by Walker Art Center, 21st Street Players, 1983 
  • A Journey to the Well, a collaboration with poet Robert Bly, dramaturg, Landmark Center and Hennepin Center for the Arts, 21st Street Players, 1984 
  • Fortune Outrageous, Playwright; play-in-progress, one-woman piece based on the challenges of combining motherhood with a life in theater.

TRIANGLES, Theater Mu: Ed Bok Le, Rick Shiomi, Tom Lee; drummer Ju-Won Lee (Photo: Charissa Uemura)

STAGE DIRECTOR, TEACHING ARTIST

Augsburg University, Professor, 1988 - 2014


30 main-stage productions, including: 

  • Classic plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Kalidasa, Shakespeare, Calderon, Corneille, Moliere, Chekhov, Ibsen, and Garcia Lorca  
  • Modern playwriting adaptations of Greek tragedy: John Lewin’s House of Atreus; Jean Anouilh’s Antigone;  
  • Contemporary reimaginings of Greek tragedy or myth: Anne Carson’s Antigonick; Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice 
  • Various other modern and contemporary works 

EDUCATION

Ph. D. Theatre and Drama

University of Wisconsin-Madison 

     Minors in Classics and Art History

     9 years movement/actor training in A.C. Scott’s Asian Experimental Theatre Program

     5 years Graduate Assistant, Asian Experimental Theatre Program

 

B.A. and M.A. Theatre and Drama

University of Wisconsin-Madison

     Graduated With Distinction

     Minor in Dance

St. John's College, Annapolis/Santa Fe

     2 years Undergraduate, Santa Fe


Publications

“Reflections of Inner Life: Masks and Masked Acting in Ancient Greek Tragedy and Japanese Noh Drama,” Modern Drama, 35, May, 1992 (Special East-West Issue)


The Mask in Ancient Greek Tragedy: A Reexamination Based on the Principles and Practices of the Noh Theater of Japan, University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1984

SELECTED RECOGNITIONS


  • Classics scholar Eric Dugdale's in-depth analysis of her direction of the 2014 Augsburg University production of Anne Carson’s Antigonick, published in Didaskalia, summer, 2014. 


  • Nationally selected for participation in the Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies seminar, Song Culture of Athenian Drama, cosponsored by the Council of Independent College, 2013.   


  • Interviewed for Siyuan Liu’s article,  “A.C. Scott,” Asian Theatre Journal, Volume 28, Number 2, Fall 2011  


  • Co-Recipient of the Playwrights’ Center’s Multicultural Collaboration grant, Jerome Foundation and NEA's Diverse Visions Program, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, for various professional theater projects in the Twin Cities.  


  • The Hand That Holds the String, is the main subject of A Different Kind of Asian American:  Negotiating and Redefining Asian/American in Theater Mu, opening chapter, Northwestern Ph.D. dissertation by Hsui-chen Lin Classon, completed December 2000  


  • Roberta Uno solicited the script/video recording of The Hand That Holds The String for the national archives of plays by Asian American women, when she was director of the New World Theatre, 1999.


Copyright © 2022 Martha Bancroft Johnson - All Rights Reserved.


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