• Quanda Johnson
• University of Wisconsin, Madison

Quanda Johnson is a Fulbright Scholar and a current dissertator in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison, pursuing a dual doctoral minor in Afro-American Studies and Visual Cultural Studies. As a Dean’s Graduate Scholar at New York University’s Gallatin School (MA 2017), she presented her work, In Search of Negroland: a different study of the negro race and The Ballad of Anthony Crawford: a love letter to america at the Gallatin Art Festivals 2016 and 2017.

From Broadway to grand opera, Quanda seeks ways to utilize performance to disrupt and consequently alter entrenched, cyclical conversations about Blackness and the African Diaspora. Awarded the Fulbright Community Leadership Program Grant, she wrote, edited, and directed Beyond the Veil of the Sorrow Songs, which examined the Underground Railroad as related to Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and current Maritime racial issues. Performed in the spring of 2014 at Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie Arts Center (Halifax) and Alderney Landing Theatre (Dartmouth), it was welcomed at New York University (February 2018) at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

Quanda earned a MFA in Acting from New School University and a Master of Music degree from the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College. An AUDELCO Award nominee for her portrayal of Marian Anderson, she appeared in Broadway’s Tony award winning Ragtime and made her New York City Opera debut in The Mother of Us All with Lauren Flanigan.

Her work is dedicated to the memory of the first artist in her life, her mother, Vernetta.

Speaking In:

• Performances – Quanda Johnson, Rashid Zakat