In 2024, Johanna Beale Keller's award-winning one-act farce, "The Trouble with Peaches" is slated to premier at Gallery Players Black Box ("Brooklyn's premier off-off-Broadway Theater" founded by Harvey Fierstein), and the play was a winner of the 2023 Central PA Dance & Theatre Fest Playwriting Competition. "That Hike to Hart Lake" will get ten performances directed by Jeffrey Sanzel at Theater Three Production’s 25th Annual Festival of One-Act Plays in Port Jefferson, NY. 'Cuse Cabaret, a comedy revue co-written with jazz singer Hanna Richardson that played to sold out houses in 2023, and returns in 2024 thanks to a grant from CNY Arts.
Her Shakespearean romp, "Look, where it comes again!" was one of five plays selected (out of over 700 submissions) for the 2023 Festival of Originals at Theatre Southwest in Houston, TX, and her marital revenge comedy, "Amicably, Kinda Sorta" was produced in 2023 Rooftop's 10x10 Festival at the ARTfactory in Manassas, VA, and at North Park Playwrights Festival in San Diego; "How To Get Home" was a winner of the 2023 South Carolina Theatre Association Playwrights Festival. She wrote and directed the film,"The Perfect Match," featured in the 2023 NYC Rogue Theater Festival, and a finalist in the 2023 Stage32 International Short Film Competition. Her radio play, "The Foley Guy: A Romance," was featured in the Atlanta Fringe Festival, where it was Winner of the 2023 Atlanta Fringe Festival Audio Critics’ Choice Award, as well as winning 3 of the 6 other awards, including: Best Writing, Best Mixing, and Most Creative.
She made her debut as a playwright in 2022 with Why Did They Get Me A Roomba? at CNY’s Jazz Central. She is a member of PEN America, the Dramatists Guild, Women+'s Playwrights Circle @ Speranza, Armory Square Playwrights, and Studio24, an acting/directing collective where much of her work is developed. Her dramatic monologues have been published in the literary magazines Mini Play Journal and A Courtship of Winds.
Current theater projects include two full length plays: "The Perseids" and "Jordan & Daisy (+Tom + Nick)."
She is an award-winning journalist (The New York Times, ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award, Front Page Award, Los Angeles Times, London Evening Standard), classical music critic (Opera Magazine, Opera News, The Hopkins Review, Strad Magazine); and poet (Southwest Review, Stone Canoe, Light, Florida Review). A nationally-known advocate of arts journalism, she is a four-time judge of the Pulitzer Prizes (in criticism) and holds an emerita professorship at Syracuse University where she founded the Goldring arts journalism graduate program at the S.I. Newhouse School.
She gardens in the creative community of Syracuse, NY.