Johnson follows his dreams: first show to debut in NYC May 9

Aaron Johnson knew at a young age that theater was in his future. 

“I’ve heard stories that I did a play about grammar in the first or third grade but I honestly don’t remember....” he laughed. “Yes I do, my mom says it was called Grammar Gulch!”

What he does remember is being in third grade and auditioning for Daniel Main’s “The Odyssey of Zarathustra.” 

“I was so scared to open my mouth and sing I think I ran home from auditions!” 

Thankfully that first experience didn’t discourage him from continuing to pursue his interest. Now, after years of starring in multiple plays in middle school, high school and college, he has flipped to the other side of the art and will watch a play he created come to life on stage in New York City. 

“It’s terrifying in a way I’ve never experienced in my theatre career,” he said. “It takes an immense amount of trust and love for the story, for the audience, and for the company to sit still during a play, even my mentors who’ve done this for years and years say it still makes their skin rash.”

He said his parents, Jim and Judy, visited him in New York in December when a workshop of SALTY was going on.

“I could barely eat breakfast, I couldn’t sit in the theatre because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit still,” he said. “I ended up laying on my back in the stage manager’s booth. The stage manager kept communicating how much people enjoyed it, but I felt much safer on the floor.”

Now, as the opening date nears, his outlook has changed somewhat.

“I can’t wait to sit in the room the next four weeks and watch this thing that started so small-- as post-it notes and ideas jotted down in the margins-- come to life through the minds of this team,” he said. “Most fortunately, Lyra Theater has gathered some of the most brilliant people I have ever met. Hearing the designers create the world of this play has left me speechless. Seeing the play through their eyes opened so many doors for me and the possibilities behind them.”

Johnson said the play, SALTY, is set in a zoo a few years from now.

“Perhaps one of the last remaining conservation zoos on the planet,” he said. “Not because we stopped caring, but because most of the animals have died out already or are on their way out.”

He said while writing the script, he wanted to find a way to channel the energy people feel when at a zoo.

“This wall-to-wall saturation of life,” he said. “We are pointing, and looking in different directions, and some of us are catching this really cool thing over here while others are focused on something else.”

The play includes seven zookeepers, seven penguins and a fox.  

“They are all intersecting and colliding their stories into one another and inevitably all pushing towards the same conclusion-- giving everyone somewhere different to look, something specific to follow,” said Johnson.

He explained that the actors double as animals and zookeepers, which he feels is a really special part of the play. 

“To be the caretaker and the taken care of-- allows for the characters to seem more filled-in and wholesome than you could typically do in a 90-minute play because their storylines speak to one another,” he said. “For example, there are two zookeepers who have just met and are pursuing each other in the most awkward and uncomfortable ways while their penguin counterparts have been together for years, have survived trauma together, carrying each other to bed. I think it’s a tasty experience to see the beginning and the end at the same time.”

In the beginning

Johnson is thankful for the support he got from his hometown to keep going after his dreams.

Despite that first experience at eight years old of running home from an audition, Johnson said Main saw something in him and didn’t let it go. 

“I was a terrible singer but he didn’t care,” he said. “When I say terrible I’m not being one of those bashful singers who coaxes people into letting me prove them wrong-- no, I’m actually terrible. And that’s okay, if that’s the one thing I have to be terrible at, I can handle it.

“I actually think he told me once it was okay if I just pretended to sing along and I was like, ‘Are you serious? Thank you!’ I started doing that in church too, and thought I was so smart fooling everybody, my mom says I wasn’t.”

Johnson said Main sees a lot of potential in all of the theater kids he works with.

“He made me feel so supported, he believes in all of his kids to the nth degree,” he said. “Every time I come home, I visit with him and he tells me about all the young kids working on shows with him now and I get so moved.”

Johnson has produced two shows with Main as fundraisers for his theatre program, Washington County Theatre.

“I’d love to keep finding ways to bring stories back to Salem and support his program and keep working with him because he cares about the work more than anyone,” he said.

When Johnson was in high school, he found someone else who saw his potential and encouraged him to expand on his love for acting.

“During my sophomore year of high school at Salem, I was really starting to get invested in theatre,” he said. “I was running from sweaty soccer practice to 1920’s Germany every day and began feeling my pull towards the latter. There were several people who began making moves on my behalf-- I tear-up just thinking about them. But all of this eventually ended with meeting Chris Bundy at lunch who pulled some strings and got me into Floyd Central that afternoon. From there, my life changed.”

Johnson said he was driving 45 minutes every day to school and he didn’t care because he was growing so much. 

“Having my passion quenched in a rigorous way made all of my other classes more interesting, studying theatre was a gateway to the rest of the world,” said Johnson. “I grew so much at that school I honestly don’t think I would be where I am today without it.”

He said it was hard to leave Salem and the move wasn’t a simple fairy-tale story for him. He had attended school with the same people since kindergarten, several even attended the same daycare with him. 

“I thought about them all the time and missed them like crazy,” he said, about his decision to change schools. “I remember going to my class’ graduation and feeling so estranged from the whole experience. It was a sacrifice and I wish it wasn’t necessary.”

In 2011, he graduated from FC and attended the University of Evansville, where he received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Theatre Performance.

“After college, I still had this small-town boy in me who was really scared to move to New York,” he said. “I could feel in my gut that I wasn’t ready. I spent the summer in Santa Fe working at the Opera and had decided I would move to Austin, Texas, after that. I didn’t know anyone (some parents of a classmate and that was it). I don’t really think I was that scared, because the idea was so romantic to me. I would go to this beautiful city and hopefully meet some like-minded artists that would, you know, be my friend.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Johnson said he always had a suspicion that he was a hybrid artist of sorts. He enjoys both the acting and writing side of the art.

“It’s not always easy to sell yourself as that because we look at it like a product, what am I selling?” he said. “Am I buying an actor? A writer? But I think I really thrive on having a big lens with a good zoom. For me, I want to learn about how to craft a story from every direction. These all feed into the same machine, and then when a project is right, focus on my responsibilities and be resourceful with the tools I have.”

Johnson actually wrote his first play while in high school and launched it in his home town.

“The play was sponsored by Beth Armstrong and Youth First and presented through Washington County Actors Community Theatre,” he recalled. “We workshopped the play in Salem and then transferred it to the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Looking back, that was huge.”

He said he feels lucky to have grown up in Salem.

“Because I came from a town that wanted to take a chance on me,” he said. “And thinking back about that play, maybe it wasn’t even that good. But it had a team behind it who was willing to try and make something for our community.”

He encourages others who have a passion for theater to keep going and not give up.

“Be brave and create with conviction,” he said. “I keep a running list of every ‘No’ I get from every audition, every experience, they are all building up to a ‘Yes’ at another job. I have no other choice than to believe there is magic in my failures, and my failures are worth celebrating.”

Before moving to Austin, Johnson said he started looking up all the theatres and auditions coming up in the area. There was one for a play he knew he could be in, so he reached out and told them he wanted to audition and they let him send in a video audition. 

“A week later the producing artistic director called me and said, ‘We’ve never given someone a job from a video audition, but we like you and we’re gonna’ roll the dice,’” he recalled. “So I moved to Austin with a job in my back pocket, and started rehearsals the first day I got there-- actually I stayed in a hotel the first week because I hadn’t even secured an apartment yet!”

He said jumping right into that production was the best way to have shaken hands with the Austin theatre community. 

“I had booked another job before my first show closed and that trend continued all the way up until I left,” he sad. “I was extremely lucky. I don’t say that enough about my Austin experience. I was extremely lucky and I’ll never forget cutting my teeth in Texas.”

Johnson said the Austin Theatre community is really special because there are people within it that hold the stories being presented to the highest standards. He said they learn from each other, they support each other and they want to nourish the community as a whole. 

“One of theatre companies I grew especially close to made a program within their company so I could produce a show under the umbrella of their support,” he said. “They simply wanted to lift me up and make space for me. 

“Looking back, these stories involve a lot of people taking a roll of the dice on me and us making something incredible happen.”

His experience in Austin eventually lead him to where he is now and the biggest opportunity he has had thus-far.

“I was working on a show in Austin (happened to be the same theatre that gave me my first job) and I realized this is a really good thing I have going here, and for some reason that felt right to me,” he said. “I always knew it was temporary. I could leave Austin with pride for my self and my work and my journey, and take this huge bag of experience with me to the city and a perspective that I didn’t have two years prior.”

In March of 2017, he took his experiences and a leap of faith and made the move to The Big Apple...every actors’ dream.

“The first thing I had to do when I moved to New York was figure out how to survive, how to pay rent, how to work jobs that still allowed me time to write and audition, how to use the train and not cry at getting lost,” he said. “I wish that last one was a joke. It isn’t.”

Johnson said the city is truly a vortex of every type or person and idea.

“I’ve felt more pressure here than anywhere to be the best artist possible, to be open everyday to what’s around me and learn from it, to admit I know nothing-- because when you don’t, this city has a way of teaching you.”

After a year in the city, Johnson’s hard work and dedication has come to fruition. A play he has written will come alive on stage May 9.

“I think SALTY is the most challenging and scary piece I‘ve shared with other humans,” he said. “I’ve taken a lot of drafts into the room, worked and re-worked the script for the last year with the help of some amazing collaborators, and now we have a play that I’m proud of to an epic proportion.

“Writing is a profession that thrives on being alone, time at your desk-- but you sign a contract when you begin the play that this thing is meant to be shared. What am I afraid of, you know? I’m still figuring that out. When I first pitched this play to a mentor of mine, he said at one point in pitching the story I started blushing, something in the story made me uncomfortable -- and that is what I should explore. I’m not trying to answer anything or solve something as a writer, but I’m awkwardly sitting in a messy world of questions and behaviors and realizing how right this is for me.”

SALTY runs for one week, May 9-13 at Access Theatre on 380 Broadway. More information can be found online at TheSaltyPlay.com.

“Although it feels like a far-off dream right now, I can’t wait to sit in the back of the theatre and watch it with an audience who know nothing about the play, and perhaps, I can hear it for the first time.”