Mariah (Mo) Horner

Dr. Mariah (Mo) Horner (she/they) is a theatre artist, musician, emcee, and educator based in Katarokwi-Kingston. Her research interests include abolition dramaturgies, site-specific performance, participatory performance, care work, and collaborative creation. With Dr. Jenn Stephenson she co-authored PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation (Playwrights Canada Press, 2024) and co-edited Canadian Theatre Review 197: Participation. Other research and writing has been published by Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, SpiderWebShow, The Skeleton Press, and Tourism Kingston.

Co-founding site-specific theatre collective Cellar Door Project in 2013 in Kingston, she’s co-created 16 original site-specific performances and has worked with NAC Canada Scene, the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, Thousand Islands Playhouse, Kingston Association of Museums, the City of Kingston, SpiderWebShow, the Kick and Push Festival, Theatre Kingston, anARC Theatre, Movement Market Collective, and the Skeleton Park Arts Festival. Interested in catalyzing non-traditional theatre forms in Kingston, she was the Festival Director of CFRC’s Shortwave Radio Theatre Festival from 2020-2022 and she ran the Storefront Fringe Festival from 2016–2018. She is a core member of Kingston superband The Gertrudes, an emcee at the Skeleton Park Arts Festival and in 2022, she won the Mayor’s Arts Award for her work in the Kingston arts community. Mo is a queer, white, cis settler dedicated to anti-colonial and abolitionist ways of moving through institutions.