John P. Keller is a theater maker and socially engaged artist with 20 years of experience in arts education and production. He is committed to creating projects that use the arts as a process of transformation across a range of advocacy areas including environmental sustainability, violence prevention, socio-economic justice and equitable community development. As a co-producer and Director of Education for coLAB Arts John has facilitated joint project design and curriculum development for programming including interview based theater world premieres such as Trueselves, Truelove, Life, Death, Life Again, and Banished as well as full scale performance immersives such as Behind the Moon, Beyond the Rain, and Watershed Moment. He has coordinated and developed community response methods used in issue and place-based mural creation with communities. This work has culminated in original works on immigration, environmental impact, and cross-cultural identity by national and international artists. Additional program development and administration include community based storytelling workshops and slams, oral history collection and archive for arts based research, original musical creation, choreography residencies, bi-lingual (English/Spanish) theater education and production, short and long-term in-school theater education residencies which integrate social justice and arts curriculums to allow young people opportunities to use art as a way to respond to complex social issues and activate their ideas through their art.
John has also worked as an independent artist both as an actor, dramaturg, and director. Projects have included - TV: Beckert on Boardwalk Empire (HBO). Theater: off broadway world premiere of Tina Howe’s Signing Beach, as well as world premieres of Mourning Sun, You are now the Owner of This Suitcase and JH3AM with Theater 167. The 2012 NY revival of The Violet Hour by Richard Greenberg. Regional: Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Pericles in world premiere of Ellen McLaughlin’s Adventures of Pericles, as well as Stephano in Tempest, Nicholas in Nicholas Nickleby, Jonathan Harker in Dracula, Roderigo in Othello and Edward in Sense and Sensibility. Contemporary American Theater Festival: Cohn in Captors. Additional roles at Alabama Shakespeare, George Street Playhouse, Worcester Shakespeare Festival, Mile Square Theater Company, Luna Stage Company, and Internationally at the Balinese Arts Festival and the Ugandan International Theater Festival. John is a proud member of Actors Equity Association.
John holds an M.F.A. in Acting from Rutgers University where he currently teaches Theater for Social Development. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy from College of the Holly Cross. He has taught theater at all grade levels in a variety of residency programs as well as at Rider University, Westminster Choir College.
