Michelle Tyrene Johnson

Michelle Tyrene Johnson

COMMISSIONS

Only One Day A Year, Coterie Theatre, Kansas City, Mo., scheduled for Fall 2020 and selected for Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices 2020 as one of six selected national plays

Coloring Within The Lines
a one-act play with the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum’s “30 Americans” Exhibit, August 2019

Justice in the Embers
Production, StoryWorks (...
COMMISSIONS

Only One Day A Year, Coterie Theatre, Kansas City, Mo., scheduled for Fall 2020 and selected for Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices 2020 as one of six selected national plays

Coloring Within The Lines
a one-act play with the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum’s “30 Americans” Exhibit, August 2019

Justice in the Embers
Production, StoryWorks (Tides Theater of San Francisco and Center for Investigative Reporting),
Oakland, CA, July 2016
Kansas City, Mo., February 2016

FULL-LENGTH PLAYS

The Green Book Wine Club Train Trip
Scheduled production, Talking Horse Productions (Columbia, Mo.), February 2020
Production, KC Melting Pot Theatre Co. (Kansas City, Mo.), February 2019
Finalist in 2018 New Works Festival at Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX)
Semi-finalist in Unicorn Theatre (Kansas City) 2017-2018 In-Progress New Play Reading Series
Winner of Olathe Civic Theatre (Olathe, KS) New Works Playwrights Competition, March 2017
Staged Reading, National Black Theatre Co. (NYC), March 2017

Final Arrangements
Staged reading, The Fire This Festival (NYC), January 2018
Staged reading, Script2Stage2Screen Theatre Co. (Rancho Mirage, CA), March 2017
(Winner of four awards in the 2017 Desert Theatre League Awards)

Echoes of Octavia
Staged reading, TRU Voices (NYC), June 2015
Full production, MeltingPot KC Theater Company, August 2014
Staged reading, MeltingPot KC Theater Company, September 2013

Pass Over
Production, Olathe Civic Theatre Association, scheduled April 2019
Staged reading, Westport Center for the Arts (Kansas City, Mo.), scheduled June 2018
Staged reading, Script2Stage2Screen Theatre Co. (Rancho Mirage, CA), March 2018
Staged reading, Jewish Ensemble Theatre (Detroit, MI) 2017 Festival of New Plays, June 2017
Workshop reading, Millikin University Theater Dept. (Decateur, Ill.), Nov. 2015

Mustard Seeds
Workshop Reading, Nelson-Atkins Art Museum,(Kansas City, Mo.), February 2018

Buried Roots
Staged reading at KC Repertory Theatre in New Works Festival (Kansas City, Mo.), August 2019
Staged reading/podcast at Parsnip Ship (NYC), October 2019

ONE-ACT PLAYS
The Green Duck Lounge
Staged reading, Mizzou New Works Series (Columbia, Mo.), Feb. 2017
Full Production, University of Missouri Theatre Department (Columbia, Mo.), Feb. 2018

Best Light
Production, Kansas City Fringe Festival, July 2015

Rights of Passage
Staged reading at KC Repertory Theatre in New Works Festival (Kansas City, Mo.), May 2016
Production, Big Momma’s Backporch Theater Co. (Springfield, Mo.), Feb. 2015
Staged reading, Midwest Dramatists Center (Kansas City), October 2014

Riding Backwards
Production, Kansas City Fringe Festival, July 2014

Wiccans in the ‘Hood
Production, BrainSpunk Theater (Philadelphia, PA), June 2014
Full production, Kansas City Fringe Festival (Sixth most attended show out of more than 120 in the festival), July 2013
Full production, Midwinter Madness Festival (New York City), February 2013

Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen
Production, BrainSpunk Theater (Philadelphia, PA), June 2014 Full production, Planet Connections Theater Festival (New York City; play nominated for Best Director, Best Lead Actor, and Best Lead Actress), May 2014

The Negro Whisperer
Kansas City Kwaanza Festival, December 2018
Production, Emerging Artists Theater's 10th Annual New Work Series (New York City), October 2013
Production, The Fire This Time Festival (NYC), January 2017

10- MINUTE PLAYS
Waiting for Virginia Wolfe
Production, The Fire This Time Festival (NYC), January 2017

Forever Hold Your Peace
Production, Smoked Apple Productions (Louisville, KY), May 2015
Olivia's Little Patch of Snow
Production, Fade to Black Festival (Houston, TX), June 2014
What A Fool Believes
Production, Superstition Play Festival (Milford, CT), July 2013
A Rebecca By Any Other Name is Still A Becky
Full production, Fade to Black Play Festival (Houston, TX), June 2013

Three Dogs and a Bone
Staged reading, Potluck Productions (Kansas City, MO), November 2012

As The Guiding Light Turns
Production, Kansas City Fringe Festival, July 2012

No Other Way
Production, Barn Players of Mission, Kansas, December 2011

SPECIAL EVENTS
An Evening Featuring the Work of Michelle Tyrene Johnson
Staged reading, Fishtank Performance Studio (Kansas City, MO), February 2014

140 Word Play
Reading, “World Theater Day Event,” Mind The Gap Theater (New York City), March 2013

Excerpt from Cushioned Edges (Renamed “Best Light”)
Staged reading, “Women Who Write Showcase,” Unicorn Theatre (Kansas City, MO), February 2013

HONORS

Charlotte Street Foundation Resident Artist 2019-2020

Selected as one of nine playwrights attending HBMG Foundations’s 2019 National Winter Playwrights Retreat in Creede, Colorado

Selected as one of the featured playwrights for The Fire This Time Festival 2017 (NYC)

Selected as BrainSpunk Theater Playwright-in-Residence for 2015 (Philadelphia, PA)

One of four inaugural resident playwrights of Midwest Dramatists Center (Kansas City, MO) April 2014

One of five writers selected for Project Playwright (Kansas City, MO), Two 10-minute play productions, June 2013
Board member of International Centre of Women Playwrights from 2013-2015

Playwright Respondent for the Mid-America Theater Conference, March 2015

Playwright Adviser at William Inge Center for the Arts 13th Annual High School 24 Hour Plays Event, August 2015

MEMBERSHIPS

Dramatists Guild of America
Midwest Dramatists Center (founder and board member)

EDUCATION

Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting degree candidate; anticipated completion May 2023
Spalding University (Low Residency Program)

Doctorate of Law, University of Missouri-Columbia, May 1995
Bachelor of Science in Journalism, University of Kansas, December 1986
Civil Mediation Certification, University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law’s Center for Dispute Resolution, June 2003

Plays

  • Long Layover by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama
    ·
    Keyword: black, woman + 5 more
    Genre: comedy, drama
    Keyword: black, woman, love, family, career, decisions, Therapy
    Lorraine is a single black woman who lives unhappily in Dallas where she has worked for a marketing firm since graduating from college. Big decisions weigh her down and in a meta-weird way she works this all out in her therapist’s office. Kelly, her therapist, wants Lorraine to picture herself in her safe space when she’s in a therapy session. But for Lorraine, safe space is more of a happy place. And her happy...
    Lorraine is a single black woman who lives unhappily in Dallas where she has worked for a marketing firm since graduating from college. Big decisions weigh her down and in a meta-weird way she works this all out in her therapist’s office. Kelly, her therapist, wants Lorraine to picture herself in her safe space when she’s in a therapy session. But for Lorraine, safe space is more of a happy place. And her happy place is an airport waiting area at Dallas Love Field. Her marketing company is about to lay off several employees but offers her a freelance contract to stay. Is the anonymous comfort of her favorite sports bar enough to keep her tethered to Texas? Her love interest, Moussa, wants to take the relationship further, but he lives in Dakar, Senegal where he helps run the family hotel chain. Is moving to West Africa in her future? In Lorraine’s spare time, she has recreated her grandma’s concoction for hair repair, and an International cosmetics conglomerate in Amsterdam, Netherlands wants to make her the modern-day C. J. Walker. Should Lorraine start all over again in a first-class European city? And then there’s her father back in her hometown of Memphis who Lorraine has been estranged from but who now has prostate cancer? Should she move back to Tennessee to mend her relationship with her only living parent? With simple props and use of the stage, Lorraine moves in and out of place and space on three continents as she decides whether the next adventure of her life centers on love, money, family, or the ease of status quo. Thematically, this is a play about a woman who is at a crossroads in trying to figure out what she wants, what she has grown into, and how to step into power, happiness, forgiveness, and love.
  • The Green Book Wine Club Train Trip by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 14
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: adventure, docudrama/historic + 4 more
    ·
    Keyword: African American, black + 4 more
    Genre: adventure, docudrama/historic, drama, fantasy, melodrama, period
    Keyword: African American, black, women, time travel, family, contemporary
    Five contemporary black women friends from Kansas City, Missouri take a weekend train trip as part of their book/wine club. Marie, a librarian, in addition to arranging the trip, is also doing research for her grandmother’s 80th birthday which involves looking through “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” the guidebook used by African-Americans in pre-integration America to know the safe places to stay and patronize...
    Five contemporary black women friends from Kansas City, Missouri take a weekend train trip as part of their book/wine club. Marie, a librarian, in addition to arranging the trip, is also doing research for her grandmother’s 80th birthday which involves looking through “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” the guidebook used by African-Americans in pre-integration America to know the safe places to stay and patronize while traveling. Marie accidentally time travels to the 1940s, where she stays in a boarding house mentioned in the Green Book. But not only has she traveled to Jim Crow Missouri, she finds herself staying in a boarding house that is actually a bordello, and where one of the “working girls” may be her great-grandmother. (The four women in the past that Marie meets are double cast with her friends on the train trip.)

  • Buried Roots by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 8
    ·
    Cast: 
    4–6
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: Ancestry, family + 2 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Ancestry, family, blood ties, secrets
    Jaime McBride, an African-American woman college professor, studies and teaches genealogy. She has improperly used her resources to find out about her biological family. And without knowing that a blood tie exists, someone walks into Jaime's life, which causes Jaime to question her life choices, her concept of family, and to figure out if it's possible to re-plant an old family tree.
  • Echoes Of Octavia by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: African American women, African-American family
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: African American women, African-American family
    Zora Anderson, a young African-American woman, co-owns Octavia's Diner with her father. The popular diner is named after Zora's deceased mother. Zora is torn between duty to her family by staying to expand the diner in a lucrative deal offered by the city's entertainment district, and the opportunity to move halfway across the country, as part of a prestigious graduate school fellowship, to...
    Zora Anderson, a young African-American woman, co-owns Octavia's Diner with her father. The popular diner is named after Zora's deceased mother. Zora is torn between duty to her family by staying to expand the diner in a lucrative deal offered by the city's entertainment district, and the opportunity to move halfway across the country, as part of a prestigious graduate school fellowship, to write a book about her idol, Science Fiction writer Octavia Butler.

    *** Held under option by Rhymes Over Beats (NYC) from 2015-2018

  • Rights of Passage by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 4
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: drama, political + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: law, police brutality + 1 more
    Genre: drama, political, tragedy
    Keyword: law, police brutality, family
    A white police officer seeks legal consultation after the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager. Both members of the law firm and the police officer find out unexpected facts from the other.
  • Final Arrangements by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: comedy, melodrama
    ·
    Keyword: bigamy
    Genre: comedy, melodrama
    Keyword: bigamy
    Comic drama (or dramatic comedy) about two very different black women who bump into each other at a funeral parlor as they are making final arrangements to bury their husbands. The strangers discover that it's not husbands plural - it's one dead man who lived a double life.
  • The Negro Whisperer by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Cast: 
    1
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental
    Genre: drama, experimental
    This is a magical realism in a one-person show. The Negro Whisperer is a figure that travels through space and time giving advice, guidance and support to blacks in American.

    The circumstances she (or he) would advise on range from everything to a young black college student being harassed by classmates who consider her name “ghetto” to failure to get Trayvon Martin to stop walking alone in a...
    This is a magical realism in a one-person show. The Negro Whisperer is a figure that travels through space and time giving advice, guidance and support to blacks in American.

    The circumstances she (or he) would advise on range from everything to a young black college student being harassed by classmates who consider her name “ghetto” to failure to get Trayvon Martin to stop walking alone in a strange, white neighborhood.
  • Pass Over by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 6
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama
    Genre: drama
    The Washingtons, an African-American family, has lived next door to the Levy family in a Philadelphia neighborhood for a few generations and in the wake of the death of the Washington family matriarch, secrets, discoveries and conflicts collide. The Washingtons finding old stock in the Levy family business creates family, cultural and personal tension.
  • Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, political
    What if blacks were reduced to one person and whites reduced to one person and they had to verbally slug out how both races would continue to co-exist in America? "Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen" explores with humor and uncomfortable jabs how racial tension has led to where this country is and what uncomfortable truths have to unfold for it to continue. Will Billy and Eve fight it out...
    What if blacks were reduced to one person and whites reduced to one person and they had to verbally slug out how both races would continue to co-exist in America? "Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen" explores with humor and uncomfortable jabs how racial tension has led to where this country is and what uncomfortable truths have to unfold for it to continue. Will Billy and Eve fight it out and save this country's future? Or will Weeping Hawk make America have the ultimate do-over?
  • Wiccans in the Hood by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama
    Genre: drama
    Wiccans in the Hood” is an one-act play that takes place in a cemetery located in an urban, predominantly black neighborhood. Three white people and a Black (or Latino) friend decide to perform a centuries-old ritual of offerings to an African spirit when they are encountered by a black woman who lives in the neighborhood who originally mistakes them for Wiccans. The offerings include eggplants, lit candles,...
    Wiccans in the Hood” is an one-act play that takes place in a cemetery located in an urban, predominantly black neighborhood. Three white people and a Black (or Latino) friend decide to perform a centuries-old ritual of offerings to an African spirit when they are encountered by a black woman who lives in the neighborhood who originally mistakes them for Wiccans. The offerings include eggplants, lit candles, flowers and even a teddy bear at some point. With comedy and emotional confrontation, all five characters delve in to the testy areas of religion, race and convention and become transformed by the experience.