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Johanna Beale Keller is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright and lyricist.

An ensemble drama about friendship and mortality, That Hike to Hart Lake, was showcased in the 50th Concord Theatricals Off Off Broadway Festival in August 2025 with the original cast and director, Jeffrey Sanzel; the play was premiered and received ten performances last season at Theatre Three Festival in Port Jefferson, NY. Additional 2025 stage productions include: an airport-themed short, The Marshallers (Babelfest, The Redhouse in Syracuse); the meta-comedy, Riley Versus Riley, or How To Write A Play (King’s Theatre in Nova Scotia; and Winner of the Audience Favorite Award at Free Fall Theatre’s Sac Town Festival in Folsom, CA); the marital revenge comedy, Amicably, Kinda Sorta (Village Playbox in Haddon Heights, NJ; and The Acorn in Three Oaks, MI); and Why Did They Get Me a Roomba? : Monologue for Actor and Robo-Vac (Winner of Best Monologue Comedy at Redlands Theatre New Works Festival in Redlands, CA).

Keller wrote and directed the rom-com, The Perfect Match, which has been an Official Selection screened at seven film festivals and has received Awards from the Southern Shorts (BEST COMEDY and BEST SCREENPLAY), Magnolia (BEST FAMILY FILM) and ONIRIOS (BEST COMEDY), among other awards. Co-starring Evelyn Oliver and Derek Emerson Powell, The Perfect Match is a comedic critique of A.I.-generated dating and our expectation for perfection in the Digital Age. The script is also being produced and broadcast by Shoestring Radio Theatre on KXSF-FM San Francisco in Fall 2025.

Her current projects include the full-length script Jordan & Daisy (+Tom + Nick), a response to the novel The Great Gatsby. It was featured at the 2025 F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference at NYC’s New School, commemorating the centennial of the book’s publication. The stage play version was selected for NEXT Readings of New Works Series at the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, NY, and praised as:

A brilliant and engaging interpretation and deeply satisfying for contemporary audiences. -Lissa Sidoli, director

A vivid response to Fitzgerald’s timeless classic, this new play brings a tremendous new depth to the novel’s iconic characters, altering its thematic landscape in a surprising, moving, and wholly original way. -Michael Tamburrino, Artistic Director of Glimmer Globe Theatre and Manager of Performing Arts Programs, Fenimore Museum

In 2024, her theater farce, The Trouble with Peaches, premiered at Gallery Players Black Box ("Brooklyn's premier off-off-Broadway Theater"), and was produced at Valhalla Lake Tahoe, CA at the WordWise Festival; the play was a winner of the 2023 Central PA Playwriting Competition. A comedy revue, 'Cuse Cabaret, co-written with jazz singer Hanna Richardson, played to sold-out houses in Syracuse in 2023 and 2024, and received a grant from CNYArts.

In 2023, Keller’s Shakespearean romp, Look, where it comes again! was one of five plays selected (out of over 700 submissions) for the Festival of Originals at Theatre Southwest in Houston, TX; Amicably, Kinda Sorta was produced at the ARTfactory in Manassas, VA and in San Diego's Northpark; a GPS navigation comedy, How To Get Home, won the South Carolina Theatre Association Playwrights Festival and was showcased at Studio24 Syracuse.

As a trained musician, Keller is particularly interested in sound. Her radio play, The Foley Guy: A Romance, was featured in the Atlanta Fringe Festival, where it won the 2023 Atlanta Fringe Festival Audio Critics’ Choice Award, as well as 3 of the 6 other awards, including: Best Writing, Best Mixing, and Most Creative. She has been honored to be invited to serve as a judge for the 2024 and 2025 Festivals.

A late-blooming playwright, Keller made her debut as a writer for theater in Dec 2022 with Why Did They Get Me A Roomba? : Monologue for Actor & Robo-Vac.

A graduate of the three-year Dramatists Guild Institute program in Dramatic Writing, she holds advanced degrees in music and literature. She is a member of PEN America, the Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Circle@Speranza Theatre Company, and Armory Square Playwrights.

She is an award-winning journalist (The New York Times, ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award, Front Page Award, Los Angeles Times, London Evening Standard, Graydon Carter’s Air Mail) and classical music critic (Opera Magazine, Opera News, The Hopkins Review). A nationally-known advocate of arts journalism, she is a four-time judge of the Pulitzer Prizes (in criticism), has served on the board of the Music Critics Association of North America, and she holds an emerita professorship at Syracuse University where she founded the Goldring arts journalism graduate program at the S.I. Newhouse School. She lived in Manhattan for 30 years where she was an arts administrator at Lincoln Center, editor of Chamber Music magazine, and writing professor at The New School.

She gardens with her muse, poet Charles Martin, in the creative community of Syracuse, NY.