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In 1974 Eleanor founded The Emmatroupe Experimental Interdisciplinary Theatre Laboratory in lower Manhattan and serves as its artistic director. Ms. Johnson holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Theatre from Sacred Heart University. She received a fellowship to study Honors Drama at the University of Manchester in England and apprenticed in the professional British Theatre. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in theatre directing from New York University, Tish School of the Arts. She studied film making at The Collective for Living Cinema, DCTV, and Millennium Film Workshop. The artists who most influenced Johnson’s film aesthetics are Robert Bresson, Andrey Tarkovsky, Carl Dreyer and Akira Kurosawa. She studied photography at the International Center of Photography and with Mary Ellen Mark. In 1995 Ms. Johnson was invited to The Sundance Film Institute where segments of Emmatroupe’s film work-in-progress was privately screened for Robert Redford and others.

Eleanor Claire Johnson is listed in the eighth edition of The World’s Who’s Who Of Women. She was chairperson of the 1980 international panel, The Status Of Women In The Arts Worldwide, held during the World conference of The United Nations Decade For Women in Copenhagen, Denmark.

During the last thirty plus years Johnson and her Laboratory have been on the cutting edge of the interfaith spiritual and consciousness movements both in the West and in the East. In 1987, Ms. Johnson took Bodhisattva vows with His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama. She remains to this day a devout practitioner of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. In 2001, she completed a eight-month Buddhist retreat in Bodhgaya, India, at the request of her root lama, His Eminence Choeje Ayang Rinpoche.