Artist Roster

Johanna Schloss is a performing artist with a wealth of experience in theatre, music, and education under her belt.   A professional actor, director, musical director, and playwright, she has worked in many capacities in theatres across the country and currently serves as the Director of Education & Community Engagement at Delaware Theatre Company.  She is a graduate of the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Performance and a Bachelor of Science in Education (including secondary teaching certification), and earned her Master of Arts in Teaching with an emphasis in Communications from Webster University.   She has worked as a musical director, pianist, actress, and teacher for Stages St. Louis and other Missouri theatres.   After relocating to Wilmington, Delaware, she has been active as an artist and teacher in the Delaware and Philadelphia-area theatre communities, and her performances have been seen in numerous places regionally, including the mainstage of  Delaware Theatre Company and around the state with the First State Children's Theater.   She is a 25-year active member of SAG-AFTRA.   With DTC, she is a popular lecturer for their Wednesday matinee Viewpoints series, writes and directs for the Totally Awesome Players, produces the Delaware Young Playwrights Festival for high school students across the state, and teaches in many of the theatre's outreach programs.  

She has written multiple plays, including Everyday Holiness (commissioned by the Diocese of Wilmington for its sesquicentennial celebration);  The Lost Treasure of Plainville; Don't Fence Me In; One, Two, Three Change (all written for and  based on ideas generated by DTC's Totally Awesome Players); The (Offbeat) Odyssey; and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (for online or in-person performance).   Her work is often designed for flexible ensemble casts.   With her colleague Allie Steele, she co-authored the book Creative Collaborations:   Six Totally Awesome Plays, which was published in 2020.      

With almost 20 years of classroom teaching experience as a theatre and vocal music instructor, Johanna brings a breadth of skill and insight in curriculum planning, implementation, and assessment in performing arts to her work with children and adults.   Her methods focus on  identifying students' current skills and interests, broadening their knowledge of content and technique, and guiding them further in their skills in creating, performing, analyzing, and refining their work, all within a supportive learning atmosphere.   As a teacher and teaching artist, she has developed and taught acting, musical theatre, and playwriting classes for ages 5-95.   Her plays have been performed in  live, in-person stages and online formats.   She has musical directed over 20 shows and is also a professional pianist, working in theatres, schools, and churches in the area.   Within the Creative Aging scope, she has taught playwriting, piano, and choral music, with extensive work with Delaware Theatre Company's Playwriting for Seniors project, which fosters participants' use of their life stories as inspiration for dramatic work.    

Her work with special populations includes serving as co-musical director of the Variety Club Children's Chorus of St. Louis (which includes a concert performance in the East Room of The White House), musical direction of shows for Very Special Arts programs, DTC's Totally Awesome Players, and the theatre's newly formed group Team Action.    

As a child, she found delight and freedom in creating stories, imagining characters and scenarios, and bringing them to life in play with her friends and family.   This freedom of creation, imagination, and expression is central to her work as an artist:   she believes all people can tap into their shared humanity and the power of imagination to tell stories onstage, without barrier of "type," to create theatre that has meaning to themselves as artists and forges connections with an audience in a performance that celebrates what is dear, beautiful, or uplifting, and reminds us of our common need for joy, acceptance, wonder, and love.