John Jahnke is a New York-based artist, playwright, and director of multidisciplinary video and performance. He is a former opera and ballet student and a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts’ Fine Arts/Visual Arts program. He has served as a producer in the department of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Executive Director of Chashama, as well as the treatment writer for Madonna’s Madame X tour.
He has created work at BAM Next Wave, MASS MoCA, The Watermill Center, MacDowell, The Park Avenue Armory, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Orchard Project, Abrons Art Center, Performance Space 122, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, The Public Theater, Chashama, Yaddo, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, ART NY, and 3LD Art and Technology Center, among other places.
During his MacDowell Fellowship in 2007, Jahnke finished the stage adaptation of a new translation of Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty play The Cenci. In 2009, he completed the script for Men Go Down, a theater work developed at The Armory on Park in New York. During his 2022 residency, he completed a final stage edit of his theater work Opiate d'Amour, which is on hold with BAM Next Wave.
