Joyce Johnson: Emerita Professor Never Typecast in “Second Act” as a Leading Lady

When Joyce Johnson was trying to decide what to do in her retirement from California State University, Dominguez Hills, she considered the option of spending her days watching soap operas. Little did she know that in a short time, she herself would be in front of the cameras.

“If you are a really good teacher, you’re also a really good actor,” she says, recalling her career as a professor of English at CSU Dominguez Hills. “You learn to read faces and body language, and it’s like reading cues.”

A gift of acting classes from her daughter Pamela Johnson – with whom she took the classes – put Johnson in direct fire of the acting bug. After the course ended, she continued to study alone and quickly began to get calls to read for parts in independent films.

“I auditioned for an independent film called, ‘Willa Mae, The Church Lady Vampire Slayer” in 2008 and I got the lead,” she says. “I had to fight the vampires. There are scenes where they lift me up [on wires], [it was] fun.”

Johnson says that although the director wanted to shop “Willa Mae” around to film festivals, his budget ran short for post-production. Still, she says independent filmmakers often sell their work in the hope that a larger studio will adapt their story.

“I was thinking the other day, if I really make it big, somebody is going to dig up this film,” she laughs. “So I’m starting to take these parts very, very seriously.”

While Johnson is presented to potential filmmakers on her agency’s Website as a mature African American woman, some have been drawn to her look and inspired to rewrite her part. A recent example of this is her role in a festival of one-act plays presented by the Black Box Theatre of Los Angeles on Aug. 30.

“The [part] was written for a grey-haired woman with a British accent and a high-pitched voice,” said the husky-voiced Johnson. “They called me in [to read] and... gave me my choice of two parts. I chose the juicier of the two.”

“The Conversation” by playwright Alpha Blair takes place in a home for women that is administered by nuns. Johnson plays the part of Vichty, a bitter older woman who hurls verbal abuse at those around her for no apparent reason.

“I had such a good time developing her character,” says Johnson. “She’s unbelievably vicious. It took me until the last week of rehearsals to ‘capture’ her. For an A-type, impatient person like me, it was a wonderful learning moment.

“The actor [who played the character] that I attack the most seemed to be taking it personally,” Johnson laughs. “She appealed to me, and said, ‘You’re just so mean to me!’ I said, ‘But I really like you!’”

Johnson says that the opportunity to develop a part reminds her of “my favorite part of [teaching] here at Dominguez Hills – reading, becoming a detective and putting the pieces together.”

“The fun part of teaching literature is grappling with the narrative and coming to understand it with the clues... that you are given by the author,” she says. “You’re doing the same thing in theatre. But I don’t have to read any papers. I get to [have fun] and bring a character alive. I’m in heaven.”

Despite the ability to perfect a performance on film with multiple takes, Johnson says that she enjoys the challenges and collaborative spirit of live performance. She is a frequent cast member in CSU Dominguez Hills productions including the Dominguez Bridge Project’s 2007 inaugural production, “A House Called Eden.”

“Stagework gives the cast members more of an opportunity to bond because they spend so much time learning, running, and rehearsing lines,” she notes. “The other [actors] are very supportive, both in film and on stage, but live performance requires a higher level of cooperation between the actors because there are no retakes. My lines set up yours, and vice versa. We depend on each other.”

Johnson is also currently cast in a film by independent studio Newtown Castle Productions titled, “Keep Off the Grass.” In another role that was originally written for a different type, Johnson plays a grandmother who repeatedly scolds a thuggish youth for riding his bike across her well-manicured lawn.

“She’s kind of a churlish woman with an attitude,” Johnson says. “This teenager, a kind of gangster-wannabe – with pants hanging down, you can see the top of his shorts – rides across my lawn with his bike. I come out and I chastise him for it and he’s like, ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah,’ shakes his [behind] at me and leaves. He comes back the next day and we have the same altercation, where I cuss him out like you wouldn’t believe. On the third day, he comes back and all of a sudden he disappears into a hole.”

After 37 years of introducing students at CSU Dominguez Hills to the joys of African American literature through works like Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon,” Johnson says that she hopes she gave her new audience “a shared experience” in last month’s Black Box Theatre production of “The Conversation.”

“I sought to communicate to the audience the pain and the bitterness that [Vichty] feels,” she says. “If I just played her as this vicious and evil woman, then I don’t think I will have done the job I needed to do. I had to find something about her to like because that’s the only way I’m was going to be able to embody her humanity.”

Although Johnson has broken the ethnic mold in getting parts, she knows that she will be called upon to play the part of mature women and celebrates it. Unselfconscious of her age, she uses it to her advantage, both in the spotlight and out of it.

“One of the things I’m learning is that I love ‘adding years,’” she says with a smile. “I came up with that, instead of saying, ‘getting older.’ What I love about adding years is that things seem to get a lot clearer – it just feels good.”

- Joanie Harmon

Photo above: Joyce Johnson (second from left) rehearses a scene with the cast of "The Conversation."

L-R: Director David Eric Japka and actors Johnson, Teddy Vincent, Lisa Kay Jennings (standing), and Irene Chapman.

Photo courtesy of Alpha Blair