Bio
Ben Johnson has worked as a professional performer and teacher since 1997. Locally, he has appeared in Waiting for Godot at Marin Theater Company, The 39 Steps and The Underpants at Center REP, Scapin at A.C.T., and as an improviser with Improv Playhouse, True Fiction Magazine, Awkward Dinner Party, and BATS Improv Theatre. His other credits include The Elephant Man, Mother Courage, La Bête, The Beard of Avon and Red Noses at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Rhode Island; and A Midsummer’s Saturday Night’s Fever Dream and All’s Kool That Ends Kool at the Troubadour Theater Company in Los Angeles. He is a also circus performer who has been a featured clown in Cirque du Soleil’s world tour of Alegría, a ringmaster in Zoppe Family Circus’s Coming to America and a clown with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Johnson also created an original solo performance called Trunk Show. His film and TV credits include the children’s video project Flummox and Friends, Betrayed, Messenge, Reversal of Fortune, The Brides of Frankenstein, The 14th Floor and Inhouse: Sketching Reality. Johnson has a BA in History from University of California, Los Angeles, and MA in Teaching from Brown University.
Testimonial
On teaching:Ben is one of the best teachers I have ever had in any subject. His commitment to us as students was always apparent and he was 100% present for everything that unfolded. He guided us through the classes with solid knowledge but also with enthusiasm, confidence and humor so that he became a trusted guide. --Student, BATS School of ImprovOn performing:
As Samuel Beckett's slave character, [Ben Johnson] made every breath have the force of a locomotive lurching forward… he made one of drama's most famously absurd monologues sound downright sensible. He was an animated professor giving his favorite lecture. In one play, this performer's range encompassed much of human evolution. --Best of San Francisco 2013 (SF Weekly)
