
Professor, Theatre History
Fields of Interest
Biography
Professor in theatre history and head of the Ph.D. program, Odai Johnson took his MFA from the University of Utah and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. His articles have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Symposium and the Virginia Magazine of History as well as contributions to numerous anthologies. His books include Rehearsing the Revolution (University of Delaware 1999), The Colonial American Stage: A Documentary Calendar (AUP: 2001), Absence and Memory on the Colonial American Stage (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), London in a Box (Iowa 2017), a finalist for the Theatre Library Association Freedly Award, and Ruins: Classical Theatre and Broken Memory (University of Michigan, 2018), as well as contributor to the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, Oxford Handbook of The Georgian Theatre, the Oxford Handbook of American Drama. He contributed the lead article to the recent Routledge Companion to Theatre Historiography. He is currently working on a book on revolution and genres that explores the structures of the imagination. He teaches a range of theatre and performance history courses for the undergraduate program, and seminars in theatre history for the doctoral students. These seminars range from the studies of the classical past, Conversations with Antiquity, to the Baroque spectacles of power, the Early Modern and Transnational, the Long 18th century, historiography, and recently, Staging the City, a class on cities and civic identity taught in Rome. Professor Johnson previously held the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Professorship in the Arts, and has recently been honored as a Distinguished Alumnus from the University of Utah. In 2020 Odai Johnson was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.
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Selected Research
- London in a Box - Englishness and Theatre in Revolutionary America. University of Iowa Press.
- "Drowning Playwrights, and Other State Incursions into Genre," Mid-America Theatre Conference 2014, History Symposium #25.
- "First Person, Plural," You Are Here: The Post-Thematic Conference, The American Society for Theatre Research, November 2013.
- Odai Johnson. Absence and Memory in Colonial American Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
- Odai Johnson and William J. Burling. The Colonial American Stage: A Documentary Calendar. Associated University Presses, 2001.
- Odai Johnson. Rehearsing the Revolution: Radical Performance, Radical Politics in the English Restoration. U of Delaware Press, 2000.
- Theatre Survey, Cambridge University Press, May 2017.
- Odai Johnson. Ruins: Classical Theatre and the Archeology of Memory. Book in progress.
Research Advised
- Trainor, Sebastian. Ubu's Moment: Lost Histories of a Fin-de-Siecle Avant Garde Theatre. 2024. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Monson, Duygu. Replacing the Image of the Ottoman Turk: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Turquerie as Resistance. 2021. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Venters, Scott. The (Im)mediate Animal: An Anti-theatrical History of Interspecies Entanglements in Enlightenment Transactions, 1640-1800. 2021. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Hutchison, Jacob. Satirical Activism: Citizenship and satire in 21st century performance. 2018. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Coen, Elizabeth. Staging Theater to Realize a Nation: The Development of German National Theater in the 18th Century. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Cima, Gibson A. Postconflict Nostalgia: Postapartheid South African Theatre, 1990-2010. 2012. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Garfinkle, David U. The rise and fall of the passions of Elizabeth Barry, reading Restoration figures of the first modern actress in the civic legacy of Sir William D'Avenant. 2010. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Davidson, Derek Samuel. Martyrdom as a performance tradition. 2008. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Cole, Scott W. Traumatized performance: Antebellum Methodist camp meetings and the re-making of the American frontier. 2007. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Fitzmorris, James M. Summoning the spectacle. 2004. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Rizzardi, Jonathan. Coming of Age in America’s Coming of Age: Children, The Federal Theatre Project, and the Depression Era United States. University of Washington, PhD dissertation. In progress.
- Straus, Matthew. "Beggars begging. Thieves thieving. Whores whoring." Friedrich Schiller and Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater. University of Washington, PhD dissertation. In progress.
- Tourniaire, Guillaume. Show Boat's "Make Believe": Subversion of Stereotype and Sympathy as Liberalism. University of Washington, PhD dissertation. In progress.
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Autumn 2025
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Autumn 2022
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