Johnny Jones is the Fall 2023 Artist-in-Residence of Theatre and Dance Studies with an emphasis on Hip-Hop Theatre Studies and the Interdisciplinary Studies program.

He currently teaches and chairs the Cross-Cultural Communication program at Simmons College of Kentucky, Louisville’s only Historically Black College/University. Johnny is an interdisciplinarian creative who has taught Theatre Arts, African American Studies, Modern to Contemporary African American Theatre, and Composition. A native tongue of the Arkansas Delta, Johnny’s writing focuses on black narratives in modern and contemporary theatre and media. His academic publications include “‘Body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody’: Interrogating Black Bodies in Cable Television” (co-authored with Siobhan Smtih-Jones) for One Size Does Not Fit All: Understanding the Performance of Bodies in Popular Culture; “A Reflection on the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff’s The Hip Hop Project: Insight to the Hip Hop Generation” for The Routledge Companion of African American Theatre and Performance; “Black Radical Masculinities in American Warfare: Reconfiguring Resistance in the Body of Muhammad Ali towards Exile” in NORMA—International Journal of Masculinity Studies. Additionally, Johnny’s directing credits include The NEXUS Staged Reading Series at Westmont College; The Mountaintop by Katori Hall (2019 National Black Theatre Fringe Festival; ACCelerate Festival for Creativity & Innovation); Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ’67 for University of Louisville. Lastly, his playwrighting credit began with University of Arkansas Pine Bluff’s The Hip Hop Project: Insight to the Hip-Hop Generation (2005 finalist for Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival).

Johnny is a proud graduate of the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff (B.A., Mass Communications), New York University, Tisch School of the Arts (Performance Studies, M.A.), California Institute of the Arts (Creative Writing, M.F.A.). This former sports journalist is also a Hurston and Wilson scholar-artist who is working on unblocking creatively and writing a series of “blackplays” [sic] and poetry.