Magazine Photos by Alice Patterson at lovingmycompany.com
Johanna Beale Keller is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright and lyricist.
She wrote and directed the rom-com short, The Perfect Match, which was a featured selection in the Magnolia Independent Film Festival where it won Best Family Friendly Film. The film also won the Oniros Award for Best Comedy Short (8/24), was a Finalist for Best 1st Time Film Director, and was screened at the Producers Club in New York City; it was a featured selection in NYC’s Rogue Theatre Festival, and a Stage32 International Short Film Competition Finalist. 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.
Her current projects include the full-length script Jordan & Daisy (+Tom + Nick), a response to the novel The Great Gatsby. It will be 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" founded by Harvey Fierstein), and was produced at Valhalla Lake Tahoe, CA at the WordWise Festival; the play was a winner of the 2023 Central PA Playwriting Competition. That Hike to Hart Lake received ten performances directed by Jeffrey Sanzel at Theater Three in Port Jefferson, NY. A comedy revue, 'Cuse Cabaret, co-written with jazz singer Hanna Richardson, played to sold-out houses in Syracuse in 2023 and 2024.
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; her marital revenge comedy, Amicably, Kinda Sorta was produced at the ARTfactory in Manassas, VA and in San Diego's Northpark; How To Get Home won the South Carolina Theatre Association Playwrights Festival and was showcased at Studio24.
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.
She is a graduate of the three-year Dramatists Guild Institute program in Dramatic Writing and holds advanced degrees in music and literature. She is a member of PEN America, the Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Circle @ Speranza Theatre Company, Armory Square Playwrights, and Studio24, an actor/director collective.
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) and holds an emerita professorship at Syracuse University where she founded the Goldring arts journalism graduate program at the S.I. Newhouse School. She gardens with her muse, poet Charles Martin, in the creative community of Syracuse, NY.
