Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to JuCoby Johnson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
JuCoby, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?
One of the biggest issues I’ve faced in my creative journey is the “success complex”. That voice in the back of my mind that whispers “Shouldn’t you be farther along by now?”. I let that voice get louder and louder until writing became the biggest source of my anxiety, instead of the healing balm it was in the beginning. I would sit in front of my laptop and become paralyzed by all the expectations I’d put on myself for whatever I was working on to be “successful”. To be completely honest, I’m still climbing out of that hole. I’m working to strip away my own (impossibly high) expectations and rid myself of the pressure on my work to be “good” or “successful”. I’m trying to get back to the simplicity of just creating. Not creating for some idealized outcome, but creating because it’s exciting to me.
It’s not easy work, but I never want to lose the love for what I do. So, I’m taking the steps to interrogate my mindset.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I grew up in Jacksonville, FL, where I had the privilege to attend performing arts schools in both middle and high school. I had incredible teachers, like Amber Amerson, Dr. Lee Beger and Bonnie Harrison, who saw something in me and guided me in the right directions for my art to flourish. They also kept me out of trouble. I was a hard headed kid who saw little use in my academic studies and who showed up to school for my theater classes. They fed my creative interests while making sure I stayed on the right track. They taught me the importance of community and making sure each member of that community is lifted up and guided in the ways they need to reach their potential. From there, I moved to Minneapolis, MN to attend The University of MN/Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program, where I met one of my biggest inspirations, Ken Washington. He was a person who advocated for, of course, taking your training seriously, but also for learning who you are outside of the art form. He’d seen so many people burn out or lose themselves in the demands or allure of “success” and wanted us to understand that there was more to life, more to US than that.
After I graduated, I forwent looking for an acting agent or moving to NY or LA in order to focus on the vibrant community I’d found in Minneapolis. I discovered that the true beauty lied in what you create, not where or how “impressive” the place you create it. I worked as an actor, performing at several theaters including the Guthrie Theater, The Jungle Theater, Ten Thousand Things, and Theater Latte Da. After a while of taking what came to me and being lukewarm on some of the things I was working on, I turned to writing to fill a creative void I was feeling in my acting. Myself and a few good friends of mine self-produced a production of my debut play HOW IT’S GON’ BE. We poured everything we had into it and created something I was incredibly proud of. From there, it’s been off to the races on the writing side of things. I’ve worked with Eugene O’Neill Theater Center on two plays of mine (“…but you could’ve held my hand” in 2020 and “5” in 2022), I’m working on commissions with multiple theater around the country, and I’m expanding my creative efforts into writing for TV and Film. Writing has become a passion in a way I didn’t expect and I’m excited to keep growing, and getting better, and releasing beautiful, human things into the world.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
The mission of my creative journey is to create beautiful, human, theatrical stories centered around Black people. I subscribe to the belief that even the most mundane stories deserve epic storytelling. So, I try to infuse my work with poetry, music, dance, and whatever else might be of service in giving these stories the weight they deserve. It’s been said many times, but it bears repeating, that Blackness is not a monolithic experience. There are so many stories to tell, so many things about our culture to celebrate, and to interrogate. There’s no doubting that progress has been made, but we’re still fighting to break out of that box. Fighting to prove that our stories are valuable and deserve the time, attention, and resources that any other (cis-het-white) story deserves.
I’m deeply in love with Blackness. I’m deeply proud to be Black. My driving mission is to create work rooted in that love and in that pride.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Expectations (both the ones projected onto us and the ones we create for ourselves) and the tricky, slippery slope of trying to be “successful”. Don’t get me wrong, I want my work to be successful, but I had to unlearn this toxic idea that it’s someone else’s job to define success for me. I’m learning that, for me, the only thing that any piece I’m working on needs to reach “success” is to exist. Everything else is extra. What theater’s it ends up in, how many people see it, whether or not people like it. None of that determines the piece’s success. All that it needs to do is exist in the world. There have been times where it felt like the fear of not being “successful” would eat me alive and writing stopped being about the simple act of creation and became a matter of “achieving”. Of being “impressive”. None of that means anything in the creative process. My job is to make. Simply that. To make. I’ve learned to focus on that.
Contact Info:
- Website: jucobyjohnson.com
- Instagram: @jucobyjohnson
Image Credits
Isabel Fajardo Dan Harmon