Artist's statement
About Eleanor Claire Johnson
I am a professional artist: theatre director, filmmaker, researcher in the field of deep creativity and consciousness studies. All my creative projects bear witness to the role of the artist in society and explore the process of awakening, healing collective trauma, and wrestling meaning out of the depths of human suffering. Where I think I really have my skill is in my ability to excavate deeply into the psyche of a time and place and to ask the deeper questions that have no ready answers. Today I see myself as a 'holder' of sanctuary. I am creating sacred vessels that give back to people silence, contemplative new teaching stories, rooted in time honored wisdom, and the ethics and aesthetics of Authenticity and Hope.
“For my entire life, I've wanted to serve, to be-in-the world as part of the force that contributes to the building of a better world. That's all I've ever wanted. My roots in theatre go back to Fifth Century Greece, back to a time when true ritual had a place in the consciousness of people.”
A life in four places
1970–2000 and 2007–2020
New York
Founded the Emmatroupe Theatre Laboratory in 1976 in lower Manhattan. The Waverly Place Theatre, just east of Washington Square Park, from 1976 to 1999.
Returned to New York in the winter of 2007 to launch the 57th Street Studio, with rehearsals at LaMama, 440 Studios, and the Sheen Centre.
2000–2007
Paris
She calls these her Hermitage years. Years of scholarship, historical research, filming, open rehearsals and on-site field work.
She produced the Earthwalk Pilgrimages at historical sites across France, Germany, England, the Netherlands and Poland: the two World Wars, the French Revolution, the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, and the Roman Catholic Inquisition.
During these years she traveled back and forth to India, continuing her practice and training with many of the world's leading Buddhist masters and scholars.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
2020–2022
Vermont
In residency, working on her projects and her practice, and creating the Enemies: From War to Wisdom podcast with Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath.
Fall 2022 to the present
The Pacific Northwest
In artistic residency, continuing all her projects, and working with scholars and teachers researching consciousness and shadow work on the spiritual path.
Practice
- Took refuge vows with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in 1987.
- A devout daily practitioner of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.
- Completed an eight-month retreat in Bodhgaya, India in 2001, at the request of her root lama, His Eminence Choeje Ayang Rinpoche.
- Completed a one-month retreat at KTD Monastery, Woodstock, New York, in the fall of 2022.
- Since 2016, periods of silence in Benedictine and Dominican cloistered monasteries, in the Catholic tradition of the Liturgy of the Hours.
- Continues her studies with Thomas Hübl in The Academy of Inner Science, and with Iain McGilchrist.
- Works with scholars and teachers researching consciousness, shadow work on the spiritual path, and psycho-spiritual-historical processes for integrating intergenerational and cultural wounds.
Spirituality is the leitmotif in her art as well as in her life.
Training
Beginnings
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut. A bachelor's degree in English Literature and Theatre from Sacred Heart University. A fellowship to study Honors Drama at the University of Manchester in England, and an apprenticeship in the professional British Theatre.
Directing
A Master of Fine Arts in theatre directing from New York University School of the Arts, now Tisch School of the Arts, one of the first programs that allowed women to train as directors.
Years of training with
Joseph Chaikin, Peter Brook, Grotowski, Jean-Louis Barrault, John Gielgud, Joseph Beuys, Samuel Beckett, Madame Maria Piscator and The Piscator Foundation, Madame Katherine Sergava in the Stanislavski Method, and Uta Hagen at the HB Studio in New York City.
Film and photography
Filmmaking at The Collective for Living Cinema, DCTV, and the Millennium Film Workshop. Her film aesthetics were most influenced by Robert Bresson, Andrey Tarkovsky, Carl Dreyer and Akira Kurosawa. Photography at the International Center of Photography, and with Mary Ellen Mark.
Recognition
Invited to teach by the Prague Academy of Film, 1994.
Invited to the Sundance Film Institute in the early fall of 1995, where segments of the work-in-progress SHE WENT IN SEARCH OF A NEW AMERICA were privately screened for Robert Redford and others.
Listed in the eighth edition of The World's Who's Who of Women.
Chairperson of the 1980 international panel, The Status of Women in The Arts Worldwide, held during the World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women in Copenhagen, Denmark.
... in honor of those who fearlessly walk the path embodying the naked heart of the Divine in service to Humanity and the Earth.