John has taught and directed in New York, Texas, Georgia and Massachusetts. In addition to many full-length productions, his directing resume includes ten-minute plays for the Boston Theatre Marathon, Playwrights Platform, and staged readings of several new plays in Boston. He has directed an array of comedies such as Tartuffe, Hotel Paradiso, Stage Door and We Won’t Pay, We Won’t Pay as well as experimental plays such as Our Country’s Good and On the Verge. Along with his wife, choreographer Pam Newton, he created Dreaming Shakespeare, a devised performance piece based on Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets.

In the 16-17 BC Theatre Season, he staged Kingdom City by Monan Professor Sheri Wilner. In 2014 he directed Song from the Moon, a dance/performance piece, followed by The Trojan Women at BC. In 2013, he staged For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Enuf, which played for six sold-out audiences. He directed Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov for the Classical Theatre Company in Houston, Texas in 2012. He has also directed The Arabian Nights (2113) and Doubt (2012), both for BC Theatre.

John is the editor of The Critical Response to Eugene O’Neill (Greenwood Press, 1993), and he also compiled “Black Broadway,” a database detailing the contributions of African Americans to Broadway theatre.