WVTC Co-Founders
Co-Artistic Directors
Bruce A Lemon Jr is a storyteller born and raised in Watts, CA. As a child, his father made him write stories and read them aloud in the hallway as punishment for lies and mischief. He’s still in trouble.
Lemon is an actor, writer, director, producer, mentor, and creative collaborator who creates an any medium he can grasp and takes an honest attempt at creating in many mediums he cant. A proud Hampton University Alumni, he earned a BA in Acting and promptly moved to New York for love and picked up an internship as a Stage Manager and Production Assistant at the Juilliard school to survive. Inspired by the city and new colleagues the next step was graduate school at The New School for Drama earning his MFA in Acting. Since then he's worked with the numerous companies on east coast including the Flea Theater as a member of The Bats and touring with the McCarter Theater Education Department before coming home and diving head first into LA theatre working with the LA Opera, Son of Semele, Company of Angels, Mutineer, Illyrian Players, The Vagrancy, and more. He made his artistic home at Watts Village Theater Company both as an actor and Board Member. With WVTC he's appeared in RIOT/REBELLION and FOLLOW for which he won the 2014 Broadway World LA award for Best Leading Actor in a Play. Host of 89.3 KPCC In-Person’s UnheardLA. Associate Artistic Director/Ensemble with Cornerstone Theater Company. An Illyrian Player. Serving on the Board of Directors of Collaborative Artist Bloc. Hobbies include: Holding a mirror up to America, rabble rousing, chasing dreams, working for the reimagining of his community, and listening to the kids. |
Donna Simone Johnson has worked in theatre, tv and commercials as a child and earned a MA in Dance (Somatic Education) from New York University and a MFA in Acting from CalArts. She now works in a bevy of roles in theater, primarily as an actor, choreographer and producer, and in Arts Leadership with a variety of organizations, including on the Ovation Rules Committee, (which oversees LA’s Ovation Awards), as the Chair of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA) for the Los Angeles Stage Alliance and on the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Board at Center Theatre Group. She is also the Co-Founder of Hardcorps (an arts organization that provides training to marginalized communities, namely those below the poverty line), a consultant on KPCC’s Racism 101, on the artistic boards of IAMA Theatre and The LA Poverty Dept, an associate producer and alum of Directors Lab West and a regional representative for the Parent Artist Advocacy League, which provides resources and funding for parents who work in theater. In August, she started the non-profit Ujima Project which organizes community actions monthly and works directly alongside Watts Village Theater in community clean-ups, managing and stocking public fridges and hygiene drives in Downtown LA’s Skid Row.
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