Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Britta Johnson is carving out a path of firsts.
Most recently, among her many firsts, she is the winner of the inaugural Paul O'Sullivan Prize for Musical Theatre for Life After.
At 24, Johnson has experienced more success than many artists could hope for in a lifetime. She started blazing a trail in musical theatre when she was still a Central Secondary School student. At 18 she wrote a full-length musical called Big Box Story which had a run at the school before it was put on the Avon Theatre stage as a one-night special performance. It sold out.
“I knew what was happening to me when I was 18 was amazing, but I didn't realize how unique,” she said. “It's so difficult to make work like that happen. I look back at the people who said yes to me and I'm so grateful.”
It was soon after that she went to the University of Toronto -- she graduated last year -- to study her field but she admits there were distractions. Among them was Life After, a comedy about 16-year-old Alice who must come to terms with the death of her father, Frank Carter, the famous author of self-help books. He's also a man she feels she never really got to know. He dies in a traffic accident just as his latest self-help book is about to hit it big.
Johnson started working Life After when she was 19 and a writer in residence at the Paprika Festival in Toronto.
Life After was chosen as the festival's fundraiser and as a result it got some traction, she said. The public reading of the play at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto featured some very high-profile actors including Sheila McCarthy, Trish Lindstrom and Steven Gallagher among many others.
“I still haven't gotten over that night,” she said.
It's a big deal for a Stratford-raised playwright and musician to work with actors she grew up watching and revering. Johnson has to transition from admirer to equal and colleague. It takes a lot of practice in the mirror ahead of time to work out her nerves, she said.
“It's a lot of people I used to make coffee for when I worked in Stratford.
“I'm so lucky to get to work professionally as a writer. All of a sudden I'm in a room with people I've watched from afar. I can't be wasting time trying to figure out how to talk to them. We all have a job to do,” she said.
She's not serving coffee anymore but if it's a job she has to return to, she's fine with that too. She has an unabashed and unconditional love of musical theatre -- it doesn't have to make her famous. Her love lies in the act of doing.
“If I have to make coffee that's OK. I like coffee. This industry is up and down.”
If her name doesn't sound familiar, make note of it, you'll be hearing it again in future. And maybe, as the Stratford Festival commissions work more often, another Johnson musical will shine at the Avon Theatre.
Asked if she'd like to return to her hometown she doesn't need to think about it.
“Oh my gosh, yes. That's the pinnacle. That's it for a theatre artist.”
Based in Toronto now, she hasn't forgotten where she came from. In fact, the community itself, with arts projects like Spring Works, is a source of inspiration, she said.
“There are so many big thinkers there,” she said. “I think it will be a long time, if ever, that I get to work at the Festival but it's the community I feel at home in and inspired by.”
Johnson's career has been on a steady climb upwards. When she was 20 her musical Alligator Tears was the first in Blyth Festival Theatre history to move to the main stage with the Young Company. Johnson also co-directed the production.
With a string of firsts behind her, aspirations for new personal firsts are a bit surprising.
“I still don't really know how to use an oven. That would be great,” she said laughing.
Then her tone changed slightly as she contemplated the bigger dream.
“I have been able to work on professional projects as a songwriter and a collaborator, to head something up a la Big Box Story would be huge.”
It will be no surprise if she gets the opportunity. For now though, she has plenty of creative outlets to keep her busy.
Johnson and her older sister Anika wrote the songs for the current production of Mordecai Richler's Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang playing at the Young People's Theatre until the end of January. Johnson is also the Acting Up Stage writer in residence. There she has been collaborating with Sara Farb (Anne Frank and Mary Tudor) this past season at the Festival.
She'll also be working with the Art Gallery of Ontario in the coming months on a project called Reframed. Three different song writing teams will do short works inspired by pieces in the gallery in early spring.
“It sounds impressive. I get to say I'm doing something with the AGO,” she said
By Laura Cudworth for www.stratfordbeaconherald.com.
Photo: Britta Johnson.
2015-11-27
Stratford: Stratford's Britta Johnson wins the inaugural Paul O'Sullivan Prize for Musical Theatre