Brian Johnston

Brian Johnston, like his namesake, Johnston (or Freeman) in The Lady from the Sea, has traveled widely. After finishing sporadic elementary schooling in 1945 at age 13 and military service in Malaya (1950-53) he worked at various (unskilled) jobs, spent a year at Fircroft College, Birmingham, England and gained a scholarship to Cambridge University, in 1957. He has taught at Cambridge University, England; Norges Laererhøgskolen in Trondheim, Norway; Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; the University of California-(Berkeley and Santa Barbara); Yarmouk University in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; the University of Amman, Jordan; Beirut University College, Beirut Lebanon (1982-3; and from 1983 to 1986 at the American University of Beirut. He joined the faculty of the School of Drama, Carnegie Mellon University in 1986 and is currently retired (Emeritus). He has published three critical studies of Ibsen: To the Third Empire: Ibsen's Early Plays (1980); The Ibsen Cycle (1975 revised 1992); Text and Supertext in Ibsen's Drama (1988). Performances of his translations of Ibsen include A Doll House (Center Stage, Baltimore), Ghosts (Alliance Theater, Atlanta; Berkeley Repertory Theater, Berkeley), An Enemy of the People (Center Stage, Baltimore and Perseverance Theater, Alaska), Hedda Gabler, The Lady from the Sea (George Mason University) Rosmersholm (Washington Shakespeare Company, DC); Little Eyolf (University of Toledo, Ohio) and various other college and university productions up to the present. He edited the journal Theater Three between 1986 and 1991 He has lectured on Ibsen in the United States and internationally. In addition to essays and reviews in numerous journals his critical work has appeared in anthologies of drama studies. Four volumes of his translations have been published by Smith and Kraus: Ibsen: 4 Major Plays translated by Rick Davis and Brian Johnston (1995); Ibsen: Volume II Four Plays (1996); Ibsen: Volume III: Four Plays (1998). His version of Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean was published in 1999 by Smith and Kraus. He edited the Norton Critical Edition of Ibsen's Selected Plays, published in 2004. It includes his new translation of Peer Gynt. In 2009 Smith and Kraus published an Electronic edition of his verse translation of Ibsen's LOVE'S COMEDY, available online as a PDF file from Smith and Kraus, Publishers, Inc.,Lyme N.H. Brian Johnston's website is www.ibsenvoyages.com