Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca began her professional acting career at 19 in the theaters of NYC.  She soon landed the title role in The Tinsley Bumble Show, a comedy series for the Women’s Entertainment Channel.  Not long after the show wrapped, Rebecca decided to make the journey westward to Los Angeles where, together with her best friend and writing partner Annie Mebane, she started Little Ventures Productions. Their first little venture, She Always Told Me, an original one-act play written by Mebane, ran for a successful 15 weeks to critical acclaim.  She can currently been seen starring in the LVP produced Easy Bake Lovin‘, a comedy web series.  Around Los Angeles, Rebecca has received rave reviews for her performances in Zanna Don’t, a 2008 LADCC winner.  She was last seen at the Mark Taper Forum in Pippin, a co-production between Center Theatre Group and Deaf West Theatre and will be appearing in DWT’s upcoming Children of a Lesser God.  She can also be seen in the upcoming WB web series, Downer’s Grove.  She enjoys cheesecake baking, shoe shopping, and all things vintage.

A wonderful review from Backstage West!

 Very little makes cranky critics happier than suddenly, mid-play, remembering we are watching acting and not the real thing. It happened midway through this production of Mark Medoff's 1980 play about the struggles of the deaf in a hearing world—and ultimately about all of our struggles to hear and be heard. The play's two leads, Shoshannah Stern and Matthew Jaeger, are stellar.

Stern plays Sarah, a young woman profoundly deaf from birth, who attended a school for the deaf and now prefers to work there as a maid rather than deal with the hearing world. Jaeger plays James, the school's new speech therapist, fluent in American Sign Language but apparently unaccustomed to the wily ways of the students. The actors fully evoke their characters. Stern does so through translucent emotionality and vivid use of ASL; she does not speak aloud, although Sarah's second-act breakthrough is astoundingly clear and almost musical. Jaeger not only creates a finely wrought character, he also narrates the play, speaks Sarah's lines aloud, and simultaneously performs the whole in ASL.

Not all is perfect in this production. We catch more than a whiff of the 1970s in the sexual politics and in the student radicalism, and the actors (Tami Lee Santimyer and Brian Cole) who play the hard-of-hearing characters are not always completely comprehensible, although they certainly make their characterizations clear and full of youthful bravado. Playing the presumably wiser adults, Marilyn McIntyre is luminous and thoughtful as Sarah's mother, Time Winters makes James' supervisor frighteningly stern yet disarmingly forgiving, and Rebecca Ann Johnson is a lovely throwback to earlier times as an out-of-step lawyer.

The evening is fluidly, wisely, and tenderly directed by Jonathan Barlow Lee. For the deaf in the audience, supertitles repeat all the voiced lines. And here it must be said the speaking actors speak with remarkably deft voices and ideal enunciation—a sad item to be commenting on as noteworthy in local theater. John Iacovelli's set is simultaneously appealing and reminiscent of a 1970s palette, and Leigh Allen's memory-play lighting effectively establishes scenes and evokes ample melancholy.

Reviewed by Dany Margolies

This summer I will be appearing in the 30th Anniversary performance of Children of a Lesser God with Deaf West Theatre!  It's such a pleasure to be working with this company again after such a wonderful time on Pippin at the Mark Taper Forum this past spring!  Tickets for Children are on sale now!

http://www.deafwest.org/productions/nowplaying.html

Hope to see you there!

xo - R

Please check out my webseries, Easy Bake Lovin', a comedy cooking show featuring single gal chef, Piper, as she cooks up some LOVE with your name on it!  Featured on Comcast on Demand!

www.EasyBakeLovin.com

And follow us on You Tube! 

Mwah!

R