ABOUT MILO STARR JOHNSON

Milo Starr Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist, a seeker by nature, committed to changing inner and outer realms with love and mischief. “When I was young, creativity was a survival tactic, so it made sense to work in different forms. That’s how I became a multi-disciplinary artist. But in essence, I write to perform, and I perform to deliver a message, which usually has something to do with change.”

Milo was born in 1960 and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a teenager she wrote poetry, was an editor of her high school paper, and completed the professional three-year theater training program at ACT’s Young Conservatory. She decided she wanted to direct film and attended UCLA and San Francisco State with an emphasis on film and TV production. An avid music fan and collector, Milo was a DJ at UCLA and joined the punk scene in San Francisco in the early 1980’s. She partnered Take One, a video production company, making music videos and industrial films while earning a BA in Television Writing and Directing from San Francisco State University. In 1984, she was awarded a Screenwriting Fellowship to the American Film Institute in Los Angeles and spent some years as a struggling screenwriter.

Returning to theater via a detour through stand-up comedy, she studied intensively with performance art pioneer Rachel Rosenthal, who taught her, amongst other skills, how to combine media effectively. She scribbled poems and usually incorporated them into her performances. Milo’s self-produced solo shows− always with musical and film/video elements — garnered praise and recommendations from the LA Times and LA Weekly. At 40 she began singing lessons with Micah Barnes to find her authentic voice, “because it was the only thing left that I was afraid of, as a performer,” while continuing to create and perform provocative solo theater works.

In 2007 she returned home to the Bay Area after over 2 decades in Los Angeles. She’d fallen in love with San Francisco guitarist Mark Zanandrea, a former high school sweetheart and longtime friend; she also needed to be closer to her aging parents. Discovering a music school right across the street from her home, she signed up for a theory class on whim. Milo got hooked after a few months of study. “I fell in love with the idea that I could convey emotions through music— not words, just music.“ After several years of immersion, taking classes at the San Francisco Community Music Center, private voice lessons with Raz Kennedy, singing in groups and at open mics, she commenced work on her debut album, The Perambulator, bringing all her knowledge of theater and film to the production. The album was co-produced with Zanandrea, who also played on it.

The 2016 election of Donald Trump inspired Milo, like so many others, to make protest art. She chose poetry because of its directness. Midway through 2 years of obsessive research and writing the poems which eventually became the poem cycle Miss Experience White, she knew the finished work would have to be a podcast as well: an audio drama with cinematic production values.

The surreal, three-part poetic podcast won a 2022 Gold Signal Award for Limited Series & Specials, Scripted (Fiction), a Silver Signal Award for Limited Series & Specials, Best Sound Design, a 2022 w3 Silver Award for Miniseries & Specials, Cause Awareness, and a w3 Silver Award for Original Music/Sound Design. To help promote the podcast, she asked artist John Seabury to create 12 illustrations for a 2021 wall calendar, intending to feature them in the forthcoming book.

She continued revising and polishing the manuscript while John worked on new illustrations. Learning more about self-publishing led Milo to book packager Mariah Bear for creative layout ideas and help with the entire printing process.

The book of Miss Experience White will be available in December of 2025 with a launch on January 19th at the Clarion Arts Center in San Francisco’s Chinatown District.

Milo has 7 new songs written for her next album. She hopes to release a single in 2025.

Discover more about her creative process in this short interview with Fevers of the Mind.