Photographer Susan Johann Book Signing Event at Signature Bookstore

By: Nov. 29, 2016
Get Access To Every Broadway Story

Unlock access to every one of the hundreds of articles published daily on BroadwayWorld by logging in with one click.




Existing user? Just click login.

Photographer Susan Johann Book Signing Event at Signature Bookstore The work of award-winning photographer Susan Johann has been featured in galleries and cultural centers throughout the United States, including the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, The Public Theater, The Pershing Square Signature Center, and the Contemporary American Theater Festival, Condeso-Lawler, and John Stevenson Gallery. Her photographs are in public, corporate, and private collections and have been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, the New Yorker, and American Theatre Magazine.

About Focus on Playwrights

In 1989 Susan Johann was hired to photograph Christopher Durang for a magazine article about his play Naomi in Her Living Room. The playwright was known for his outrageous comedy, so Johann anticipated a session with a rather wild, young eccentric. To her surprise, the man who came to her studio was mild mannered and buttoned down. Johann found this twist captivating, and it was then that this project was born. Over the ensuing twenty-year period, she photographed more than ninety playwrights, including many winners of the Pulitzer Prize and other prestigious awards.

Johann photographed Wendy Wasserstein, Anna Deavere Smith, August Wilson, and Nilo Cruz in the weeks after they won the Pulitzer. Tony Kushner sat for his portrait between the productions of part 1 and part 2 of Angels in America. Eve Ensler came to Johann's studio during the week she was previewing her famous one-woman show, The Vagina Monologues, and George C. Wolfe sat for her the morning after his play Spunk opened at The Public Theater.

Each playwright was photographed in Johann's studio using the same film, a single light, and a plain backdrop, creating a portrait that captures and distills something essential-an intimate view. Her interviews explore the writers' personal and creative journeys including their inspirations, roadblocks, and obsessions, which influenced their work on paper and on the stage. Even those who know Edward Albee's plays intimately, for example, may be surprised by his incisive wit and inimitable voice as revealed in his interview with Johann

<http://www.signaturetheatre.org/shows-and-events/Now-at-the-Center/Susan-Johann-Book-Signing.aspx>



Videos