Stephanie Johnson

Stephanie Johnson

Lighting Designer & Lit from the Black! Lead

Dr. Stephanie Anne Johnson is a second-generation theater practitioner. Her mother Virginia Greene worked with the American Negro Theater in the 1950s. Johnson has been a lighting designer for over forty-five years. Nationally she has done designs for La Mama Theatre (N.Y.), Black Moon Theatre (N.Y. & Paris), Telluride Theatre (Colorado), The Arizona Repertory Theatre, The National Black Theater Festival, and The Apollo (N.Y.). Locally, she has worked with Cultural Odyssey, Afro Solo, Ubuntu Theatre, TheatreFirst, African American Shakespeare Company, Shotgun Theatre, Lower Bottom Playaz, Aurora Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, and many other groups. Internationally, she has worked in India, Holland, Belgium, Paris, Italy, and Canada. Johnson is the playwright/performer of Every Twenty-One Days: Cancer, Yoga and Me, a play that has been performed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Atlanta.

Johnson is also a visual artist who has had two one-person shows in San Francisco. Her public and site-specific installations have focused upon the use of light and projections as tools for symbolic and metaphorical examinations of African American history. 

Dr. Johnson is a founding professor in the Visual and Public Art Department at Cal State University, Monterey Bay. Her work can be seen on her website