Teniece Divya Johnson ’04 ’06G

Time at Lehigh
Johnson was a 3 guard on the women’s basketball team, earning a starting position as a first-year student. They played all four years despite navigating major injuries, including a torn ACL, meniscus and bilateral fasciotomy. Johnson didn’t really have time for theatre as an undergraduate between their academic schedule and athletic commitment.

They received a Presidential Scholarship to earn a master of arts at Lehigh where they discovered the power of devised theatre, a genre where a performance is created collaboratively. With the guidance of Kashi Johnson, professor and chair of the Department of Theatre, they started The Hip-Hop Collective at Touchstone Theatre in Southside Bethlehem.

“This was my first playground where Brown and Black youth and members in the community had an open mic and could use hip-hop theatre to share and create their stories,” they say. 

After Lehigh
Johnson headed to the University of Florida to earn a master’s degree in theatre. During that time, they traveled with a team of creatives and medical professionals to Rwanda, 15 years after the genocide, to create and perform a communal piece to help facilitate healing. That word is key in Johnson’s career as the first Black intimacy director on Broadway and first Black intimacy coordinator (and enby) in film and television. 

As an intimacy coordinator, they work to heal any negative experiences from previous intimate moments, both personal and unchoreographed professional scenes. “Each person’s experience and history are in the room with us, in the background, as actors work to create a scene,” they say. Drawing it out of the background is crucial. “The words ‘they make love’ as read on a page can mean many different things to different people,” they say.

Their work is to help the actors understand limits, advocate for themselves, and collaborate with each other. “We need clear boundaries to tell dangerous stories,” they say.

They have worked in many Broadway sets laced with dangerous scenes, including Slave Play, MJ: The Musical, Richard III, and Almost Famous. They also perform stunts as an actor double and actor trainer. That means fights, falls, wirework, fire, and car chases/explosions on shows like Orange is the New Black and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and the film BlacKkKlansman. 

Career Highlight
“Intimacy coordination is not a cape you put on or a box you check,” they say. “You have to live it, personally and professionally. The impact of this work matters at this moment in time and requires more voices and points of view. Many times voices were silenced by the privilege of others, but now is the time to have those hushed voices take up more space.”

Advice to your younger self
“Stay soft,” she says. “Don’t let others harden you. Just because others have not seen it before doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable or worthy or important. Believe in yourself through it all.”

What’s next?
Johnson is busy, working on a show for BET, a play at the SoHo Rep, and working with the Black Intimacy Consent Collective. “Consent is an issue that belongs to all of us,” they say. “We need others if we are going to solve this problem.”

Read the full story on Alumni News.