Anika Johnson

Playwright / Composer/Lyricist / Screenwriter

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Anika is a composer, music director, sound designer and performer whose collaborations include Dr. Silver (Outside the March/The Musical Stage Company), One Small Step (YES Theatre), Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang (YPT), Mukashi Mukashi (Corpus DanceProjects), Summerland (Edge of the Sky), Blood Ties (featured on BBC America’s Orphan Black), Brantwood (Theatre Sheridan) and The Last Timbit (the Tim Horton's musical). She serves as dramaturg for her sister Britta's show Life After and worked on its award-winning productions with CanStage, Mirvish, San Diego's Old Globe Theater and the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Other recent projects include music/lyrics for Journey to Oz: The Immersive Animated Musical (Secret Location) and co-creating Divine Interventions (Corpus DanceProjects), which toured in 2024 to the WomAdelaide Festival in Australia and the South African State Theatre in Pretoria. Upcoming: commissions from Crow’s Theatre, Theatre Passe-Muraille and the Stratford Festival. Anika performs internationally with Corpus DanceProjects and Wannabe: A Spice Girls Tribute.

Works by Anika Johnson

CHOIR!

By Anika Johnson & Barbara Johnston

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One Small Step

By Anika Johnson & Barbara Johnston

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Move over, Justin Bieber. The title of 'most famous entertainer to have grown up in Stratford, Ontario' might soon be up for grabs. Siblings Britta and Anika Johnson are revolutionizing the musical theatre world.

NOW Magazine
Glenn Sumi

Lyricists who can rhyme with point and accuracy at the end of a line are rare enough these days; those who can do it in the middle of one are phoenixes. Need I add that the words sit perfectly on the music, and that the music is also fine, theatrical and contemporary at once?

The National Post
Robert Cushman

(Praise for Blood Ties:)

You don’t often hear lyrics as neat as that in a new musical – Canadian or otherwise. Lyricists who can rhyme with point and accuracy at the end of a line are rare enough these days; those who can do it in the middle of one are phoenixes. Need I add that the words sit perfectly on the music, and that the music is also fine, theatrical and contemporary at once?

National Post
Robert Cushman

(Praise for The Fence:) 

The Fringe Program bills it as an autobiographical song cycle and the paper program calls it a live concept album. It’s a series of songs in a wide variety of styles from rap to blues to Brel and beyond. And it’s absolutely wonderful.

Mooney on Theatre