Magazine & Studio Photos by Alice Patterson at lovingmycompany.com
Johanna Beale Keller is an award-winning playwright, filmmaker & journalist.
An ensemble drama about friendship & mortality, That Hike to Hart Lake, was showcased in the 50th Concord Theatricals 2025 Off Off Broadway with the original cast & director Jeffrey Sanzel; the play was premiered & received ten performances last season at Theatre Three Festival in Port Jefferson, NY. Staged theater productions in 2025 included: 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; & 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; & The Acorn in Three Oaks, MI); & Why Did They Get Me a Roomba? : Monologue for Actor & Robo-Vac (Winner of Best Monologue Comedy at Redlands Theatre New Works Festival in Redlands, CA).
Keller wrote & directed the film BIRTHDAY BOX, starring two-time TONY Award nominee Mary Beth Peil (Dawson’s Creek & The Good Wife) & Karis Wiggins; the film is slated for release in 2026. Her rom-com short, The Perfect Match, has been an Official Selection at eight film festivals & received Awards from the Southern Shorts (BEST COMEDY & BEST SCREENPLAY), Magnolia (BEST FAMILY FILM) & ONIRIOS (BEST COMEDY) festivals, among other awards. Co-starring Evelyn Oliver & Derek Emerson Powell, The Perfect Match is a comedic critique of A.I.-generated dating & our expectation for perfection in the Digital Age. The film premiered in NYC’s Rogue Theater Festival with the Abingdon Theater, & the script was produced & broadcast by Shoestring Radio Theatre on KXSF-FM San Francisco in Fall 2025.
Her current theater projects include the full-length script Daisy & Jordan (+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 is an official selection at the 2026 WRPN Women’s International Film Festival, and was selected for NEXT Readings of New Works Series at the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, NY, & praised as:
A brilliant & engaging interpretation & 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, & wholly original way. -Michael Tamburrino, Artistic Director of Glimmer Globe Theatre & 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"), & 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 & 2024, & 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 & in San Diego's Northpark; a GPS navigation comedy, How To Get Home, won the South Carolina Theatre Association Playwrights Festival & was read 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, & Most Creative. She has been honored to be invited to serve as a judge for the 2024 & 2025 Festivals.
A graduate of the three-year Dramatists Guild Institute program in Dramatic Writing, she holds advanced degrees in music & literature. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Circle@Speranza Theatre Company, Armory Square Playwrights, & an elected member of PEN America.
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) & 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, & 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 where she was an arts administrator at Lincoln Center, editor of Chamber Music magazine, & writing professor at The New School.
Now she gardens Upstate with her muse, poet Charles Martin, in the creative community of Syracuse, NY.
