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Johann R. Montozzi-Wood

Assistant Professor of the Practice of Theater Studies
Theater Studies
Campus Box 90680, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box 90680, 402 Chapel Drive, 109 Page, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Johann (any/all pronouns) is an actor-deviser-director having performed over a decade in regional theaters, dance companies, amusement parks, and cruise lines around the world. They hold both an MA in Theatre Studies and an MFA in Physical Acting & Devised Performance. Johann’s most recent Actors’ Equity credit was performing the title role in the musical, Jelly’s Last Jam at Hatilloo Theatre (Memphis, TN) and was awarded the regions 2020 Ostrander’s Award for “Best Leading Actor in a Musical.” Johann is coming to Durham with his lovely husband, Bryan, and two cheeky felines from the University of Vermont where he was most recently an artist-in-residence directing and devising, what he calls, a “jazz queering” of the radio play version of It’s a Wonderful Life

Currently, Johann is developing an original, devised music theatre piece, called Grandfathered In: a Concert of Scenes and Songs and recently presented a work-in-progress with an ensemble of professional artists in Sheafer Laboratory Theater. Grandfathered In is a queer meditation on ancestral grief and healing, joy, migration, and hope against the backdrop of a fallen city. The company of interdisciplinary collaborators present a theatrical cabaret of devised musical fragments and scenes set in the near future. They follow Daija (they/them), the fictional great-grandchild of Dunker and Fuel, who struggles to move on with their life after the paralyzing loss of a beloved caregiver. Through the magic of a queer incognito goddess in the form of mysterious heron, Daija is transported to a world of dream and confronted with ancestor beings on a psychic journey at the crossroads of the soul. 

Being brought up in Mississippi, Johann is returning home to the South but more fully realized as a Black queer artist-scholar, a creative midwife for emergent artists, and a slightly witchy facilitator of embodied story-weaving through queer performance, worldbuilding, and folk songs. 

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Assistant Professor of the Practice of Theater Studies · 2022 - Present Theater Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published February 26, 2024
Johann Montozzi-Wood’s ‘Grandfathered In,’ Feb. 29-March 2
Published April 6, 2023
Johann Montozzi-Wood: Creating Brave Space for Theater Students to Experiment

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Recent Publications


Breaking the Spell: the Black Body, Strangeness, and Architectures of Wonder

Chapter · 2024 (opening excerpt) "In Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin juxtaposes the “native” with the “stranger” by culminating the 1955 collection with his essay “Stranger in the Village.” In it he describes his Black, queer situation in relationship to the small S ... Link to item Cite

Queer Epistemologies in the Making of Queer Makishi: Visibility, Trans-position, and Devised Performance Practice

Chapter · December 16, 2021 Featured Publication This book considers arousal as a mode of theoretical and artistic inquiry to encourage new ways of staging and examining bodies in performance across artistic disciplines, modern history, and cultural contexts. ... Cite
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Education, Training & Certifications


University of South Florida · 2021 M.A.
Columbia College, Illinois · 2020 M.F.A.
Sam Houston State University · 2008 B.F.A.