![]() Johnson also started a parallel track in higher education re-inventing her professional life in the process. Stephanie Anne Johnson has worked as a lighting designer for decades and is also an artist of large-scale slide projection installations and mixed media sculptures. “I like working on my own side of the bay and I spend a lot of time working with companies with whom I worked in the past.” “All of a sudden, I’ve gotten very, very popular and have to turn down work,” Johnson said. Her consistency, talent and numerous successful collaborations over the years have earned her not only professional respect but more opportunities than she can accept. Johnson, who lives in Berkeley, began working with many of the smaller Bay Area theater and dance companies such as the Cultural Odyssey, AfroSolo Theatre Company, Ubuntu Theatre Project, TheatreFirst, African-American Shakespeare Company, the Marin Theatre Company and Anne Bluethenthal’s ABD Productions to name just a few. That was probably my first really professional gig,” Johnson said. “He sternly said to me ‘If you don’t get on them, I’m getting on you.’ He said, ‘You get on their ass,’ so I did. The crew chief was not amused and gave Johnson a message. “They couldn’t believe that it was a young black female and you know they just weren’t having it.” “When I walked in, those guys on the crew were still looking for the lighting designer,” Johnson said. The event was held at the Paramount Theatre, which was a big deal and a staunch union hall. ![]() There was no email back then so she took her “pitiful little resume” around on foot and was able to do some work at Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley and then with Oakland’s Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame annual gala. Laura MortonĪfter stops in Canada and Europe, Johnson eventually made her way to California where she’d always wanted to live. ![]() Stephanie Anne Johnson works on lighting for a film shoot in Oakland. It was Johnson’s first professional assignment. In the beginning, she got a one off job in Boston lighting a play called “Black Dad” written by a Black woman named Evelyn Moore. You can both do - general illumination and light people - but you can also use color and get a message across.” Nationally, she has created designs for La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York, Black Moon Theatre in New York and Paris, Telluride Theatre in Colorado, Arizona Repertory Theatre, National Black Theater and the Apollo in New York.Īround the world, Johnson has worked in India, Holland, Belgium, Paris, Italy and Canada.Īs to what inspired her to “fall in love” with it, she said, “It was the fact that you could get a job and get paid, as well as the fact that it’s a very ethereal art form. Lighting designer Stephanie Anne Johnson has worked in theater productions around the Bay Area and in other counties, including India, Holland, Belgium, Paris, Italy and Canada. “I fell in love with it and now I’ve been doing it 48 years,” Johnson said. They remain friends.Īs mother had wished, Johnson studied theater at Emerson College in Boston and in her next to last semester, she took a lightning design class. She joined the high school drama club where a pal was the actor Clarke Peters (then known as Peter Clark) who has gone on to become a big time film (“Da 5 Bloods”) and television star (“The Wire”). Her family moved to the Bronx when she was 2 years old, and she was raised there and in New Jersey. Johnson was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Young Stephanie took those messages to heart. “She talked about theater as the greatest profession and theater people were the best people on earth.” “All my life she had a pile of plays that she was reading,” Johnson continued. Its Studio Theatre school of drama graduated such major talents as Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Isabel Sanford and Alice Childress. The ANT was a legendary and influential Harlem-based Black theater ensemble that was active from 1940 through 1951. “My mother worked with the American Negro Theater before I was born,” Johnson said. Her energy and enthusiasm are inexhaustible.ĭrama, as an artistic form, has been central for Johnson since she was a child in Englewood, New Jersey. Johnson is also a creative writer and performer of original theatrical work. She’s a respected educator and a Black feminist activist. Johnson is a theatrical lighting designer who also co-creates installations based on original lighting designs.
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