JM is a theatre-maker and arts educator
and practice-led researcher. He holds a
PhD in Theatre from University of Reading
(UK). His play, Rumi High, an intifada by
johnmichael rossi, is the center-piece to
his doctoral thesis, Collabowrighting the
Hyper(play)text: A Postdramatic Digital
Poetics, which considers playwrighting by
way of web-design as an expansion to
collaborative playwrighting practices. His research is focused on text, authorship, playwrighting, collaboration, digital literature and political performance. JM also has a BA in Theater Studies from Emerson College and an MFA in Directing from Brooklyn College.
He was Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Course Leader for BA (Hons) in Theatre & Professional Practice at University of Bedfordshire (UK) (2014-2016) and has also taught at University of Reading and City University of New York, Brooklyn College. He is an active member of the Performance-as-Research Working Group for the International Federation of Theatre Research, having presented research and facilitated workshops at conferences in Barcelona, Warwick, Hyderabad and Stockholm.
As the founding Artistic Director of newFangled theatReR (2004-2014), JM has written, directed and produced several new experimental works including Short Kutz & Forks, a TACK of an American Conscience, the AmerikAn trip, tik and Up On A-Farm. His production of Mac Wellman’s Harm’s Way won the FRIGID 2007 New York Audience Choice Award and was remounted as a co-production with HorseTRADE in October 2007. His two plays, a TACK and trip, tik were recently published as a ‘pair of playz,’ in Play’N Amerika, (available through Amazon.com).
In 2009 he collaborated with LOTOS Collective and Zoukak Theatre Company in Beirut, Lebanon on Triangulated City for which he was a recipient of TCG's Future Collaborations travel grant. As a member of LOTOS Collective he was the WordSmith for Trial of the Mariner at Hoxton Hall, London and Noah’s Ark(IVE), an ArtsWorks residency at The Barbican Pitt Theatre. He most recently collaborated with LOTOS founder, R.M. Sánchez-Camus in 2015 as Wordsmith for Seek Courage, a site-specific promenade performance in Ashford, UK, commissioned by People United and Jasmin Vardimon Company.
JM has worked as a teaching artist in over eighty public schools in New York City and surrounding areas. He has taught in primary, intermediate and high schools to various populations, including autistic and English language learners. He worked with Vital Theatre Company to form Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School, where served as Program Coordinator and Resident Teaching Artist (2007-11), having designed and developed a unique theatre arts integration curriculum. He was the Education Director of Women’s Project (2008-11), promoting and developing a curriculum which integrated the work of female playwrights into the school curriculum. He has also taught for Lincoln Center Institute, Brooklyn Arts Council and Manhattan New Music Project.
He occasionally performs as ‘Dottore JoMiRo’ in The S’kool of Edumacation, an on-going site-specific interactive performance piece that explores and parodies pedagogical histories and institutional norms. This work is leading an exploration on the concept of performance-as-intervention.
More recently, during the summer of 2016, he was in residency at the Open House Hvar program in Hvar, Croatia, developing a site-specific work, The Dragon Awakens: The Tail of the Dragon, with the community of Jelsa. He is currently writing a contemporary adaptation of the Prometheia trilogy, (Promethe)üs, a forethought, in development beginning September 2016. He is also drafting a new work, The Divinely Black Comedy, a deconstruction of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and an interrogation of race in America.
He is committed to a daily writing practice that has taken the form of an extemporaneous journal titled Cranology, which dates back to 1997 and currently spans 72 marble notebooks.
