Resume

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

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.

RESUME

Martha B. Johnson

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