Biography

Dr. Moynan King is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance & Performance and an award-winning Interdisciplinary Artist.

Dr. King holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University and completed her Post-Doc at Western University in 2024. Her critical writing on theatre and performance is widely published. She was the editor of Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists (CTR 149), the book Queer/Play: An Anthology of Queer Women’s Performance and Plays, and co-editor of Sound & Performance (CTR 184) with Megan Johnson. Upcoming publications include contributions to The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Sound Studies, Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance and Performance: Volume 1, and The Routledge Companion to LGBTQ+ Theatre and Performance in North America.

Research interests include feminist performance, theory and history; the effects of queer performance on the lives and communities with which it intersects; innovative performance creation and play/screen writing; improvisation, performativity and embodiment in life and art; sound studies; and alternative comedic strategies.

Moynan was the recipient of a Canadian Screen Award for her writing on CBC’s Baroness von Sketch Show on which she also made regular appearances as an actor. She is the author of six plays, the creator of multiple performance art works including Trace, Mothering, and, most recently, WET.  Moynan was co-founder and director of the Hysteria Festival, co-director of the Rhubarb! Festival for four years and has curated multiple cabaret events including Cheap Queers. She was an Associate Artist at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre for a total nine years, where she developed such works as The Beauty Salon and Bathory among many others. Moynan has held artistic residencies across Canada including at Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse and Studio 303 in Montreal. She recently co-directed the film Club Concussion (coming to a film festival near you soon).

Current projects in development are an inter-disciplinary research project entitled Queer Improvisations: Acts of Performance, Community, and History, and a new performance work entitled The Ladies Almanack Revised.