Guest Artist Series: Creating Anti-Racist Theater is the professional guest artist series of the School of Theater, offering students, faculty, staff, and members of the theatrical community the opportunity to discuss and explore ideas and practices around building inclusive spaces and practices in the global theater industry.

Djola Branner, Director of the School of Theater, developed this program to create opportunities for students to critically engage in their industry while studying at Mason. The purpose of the series is to develop awareness through conversation of the underrepresentation of marginalized voices in American Theater and become familiar with BIPOC artists and scholars who are engaged in conversations for radical change and racial justice.

About the Artist: E. Patrick Johnson is Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University. He is a 2020 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Johnson is a prolific performer/scholar, and an inspiring teacher, whose research and artistry has greatly impacted African American studies, Performance Studies, Gender and Sexuality studies. He is the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (2003); Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (2008); Black. Queer. Southern. Women.—An Oral History (2018); and Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women (2019), in addition to several edited and co-edited collections, essays, and plays. Johnson’s written and performance work dovetail intimately. His staged reading, “Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales,” has toured over 100 college campuses since 2006. The full-length stage play, Sweet Tea—The Play, premiered in Chicago, toured across eight other cities, and to the National Black Theater Festival. Johnson is also among the subjects and co-executive producer of the film, Making Sweet Tea, which has received several awards, including Best LGBTQ Film at the San Diego Film Festival, Best Documentary Audience at the Out on Film Festival, and the Silver Image Award from the Association of American Retired Persons (AARP) for Positive Representation of LGBTQ People over Fifty at the Chicago Reeling LGBTQ Film Festival. More at: www.epatrickjohnson.com