DARREN EDWARD JOHNSTON
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
He/Him/His
Darren Edward Johnston is a producer and the Executive Vice President of No Guarantees. Producing with No Guarantees, he helped bring to the stage Hadestown (2019 Tony Award winner, Best Musical), The Lehman Trilogy (2022 Tony Award winner, Best Play), and Company (2022 Tony Award winner, Best Revival of a Musical). Off-Broadway, he is proud to have supported the New York premieres of David Henry Hwang & Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power (Public Theater), Celine Song’s Endlings (New York Theatre Workshop), and Whitney White’s Definition: An Installation Experience (Bushwick Starr). Current and upcoming productions include Saheem Ali, Michael Thurber, and Jocelyn Bioh’s Goddess, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Emerald Fennell, and David Zippel’s Cinderella.
In 2021, alongside No Guarantees founder Christine Schwarzman, he executive produced the National
Theatre’s film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet (PBS/Sky), starring Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley, filmed entirely onstage at the National amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Their second stage on film collaboration, Death of England: Face to Face by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, was broadcast on Sky Arts and nominated for the 2022 BAFTA TV award for Single Drama.
Additional No Guarantees productions include Leopoldstadt, Funny Girl, Macbeth, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical (2021 Tony Award nomination, Best Musical), Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations (2019 Tony Award nomination, Best Musical), Beetlejuice (2019 Tony Award nomination, Best Musical), Mean Girls (2018 Tony Award nomination, Best Musical), Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus with Nathan Lane (2019 Tony Award nomination, Best Play), and King Lear with Glenda Jackson.
Prior to joining No Guarantees, he had the privilege of working on new plays and musicals with artists such as Tina Landau, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Michael Mayer, Mike Bartlett, and more. Darren served on the staffs of Tectonic Theater Project and the Public Theater, where he assisted Artistic Director Oskar Eustis in his producing Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Shakespeare in the Park, as well as his leadership of the Public Theater's first capital campaign.
From 2012-2014, Darren took two years off from working in the theater to work exclusively in Democratic politics, managing local NYC campaigns, organizing and fundraising for national campaigns. When not producing theater, Darren proudly serves as an elder for Middle Collegiate Church in New York City’s East Village.