Who Are the Playwrights

Johnna Adams

Resident Playwright

2017 — 2026

Johnna Adams is an Astoria, NY-based writer who recently received her fifth off-off production from Flux Theatre Ensemble (of her play World Builders, prior productions include Sans Merci and The Angel Eaters Trilogy). Other recent NYC shows include a premiere and revival of her rhyming, Alexandrine verse play, Lickspittles, Buttonholers, and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens, by Boomerang Theatre, and the 59E59 production of Gidion’s Knot (directed by Austin Pendleton). Johnna received a Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association Citation for Gidion’s Knot (2013). She is a past recipient of the Princess Grace Award and a 2012 Finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Gidion’s Knot was published in 2012 in American Theatre Magazine. The Contemporary American Theatre Festival premiered Gidion’s Knot in Shepherdstown, WV, in 2012 and more than 40 productions have taken place in the last few years, including productions at InterAct Theatre (Philadelphia), Profiles (Chicago), Kitchen Dog (Dallas), Stages (Houston), Aurora (Berkeley) and Furious Theatre Company (Los Angeles). Johnna graduated from the DePaul University Theatre School with a BFA in Acting and received an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College under professor Tina Howe. Three of her plays are published with Dramatists Play Service and five are published by Original Works Publishing.