Susan Stewart Potter

Susan Stewart Potter is the founder and Manager of JOA Productions, LLC, registered in the state of California, and operating since July of 2005. JOA Productions, LP was founded in October of 1994 to principally produce live theatre and television documentaries. In the last eighteen years, JOA has successfully produced plays, musicals, and television documentaries; projects funded by private equity, grants and broadcast presales. Susan was the writer on all the company's projects, as well as lead producer. The Company has developed two feature films to be shot in Europe: "Full Moon to France," (a True WWII Adventure/Love Story of an American socialite who joins the French Resistance); and "The White Hotel," (based on the famous novel about a Russian opera singer and Sigmund Freud in pre-WWII, a drama that centers around her vivid premonition of the Holocaust.) Susan is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, producer and journalist. Since the early 1980s, Susan has received 18 productions of her plays. Her critically acclaimed, award-winning "Joan of Arc," a through-composed musical/operetta, for which she wrote the libretto, has received two award-winning Actors' Equity productions - both produced by JOA; winning Best Musical from Back Stage West in 1995. While studying Dramatic Art at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Susan won five Sherrill S. Corwin awards for both plays and screenplays, and the Samuel Goldwyn Creative Writing Award for her first full-length play, "Johanna Out of Wedlock." In 2001, Susan wrote and produced a documentary film for MSNBC, "Seti I: Secret Tunnel - Hidden Treasure," filmed on location in Cairo, Abydos and Luxor, Egypt; a project sold internationally, as well. From April, 2002 to March, 2003, Susan wrote docu-drama scripts for New Dominion Pictures' "The New Detectives - Case Files in Forensic Science," which airs on the Discovery Channel. She began writing for TV in 1987, specifically for AMMI Productions, which produced the long-running "This Is the Life" series for NBC. Susan is a long-time theatre and film critic for California-based publications with national and international reach, such as DramaLogue, The Santa Barbara News Press, the Montecito Journal, and the Goleta Valley Voice. Her essays and film reviews have appeared most recently on the web site: beliefnet.com, an online publication dedicated to intelligent and inspired discussions on religion, spirituality and morality. In 2004, Susan was an invited speaker at the 18th Conference on International Audiovisual Law, in Cannes, France, held during the Cannes International Film Festival. Susan is a member of the Writers Guild of America, since 1987. She is a classical cellist, watercolorist, published poet and loving dog owner. She is the mother of four grown children.