M.J. Kang is a playwright, actor, director, improviser, and storyteller. She is the first Korean-Canadian playwright to be produced professionally. She has had nine plays produced at Tarragon Theater, Theater Passes Muraille, Factory Theater, and many others. Her play, Asians Dating, was featured in Pan Asian Rep's NuWorks Festival 2021 in New York City, Son of Semele's Quick Creation Festival 2020 in Los Angeles, and was one of the winners of Camarillo Skyway Playhouse's Voices Not Heard Playwrighting competition. Her current play, Pretender, was developed as part of the Playwrights Group at Company of Angels, where it received a virtual public reading and will be part of Morgan Wixson Theater's inaugural New Works Festival.
She is currently on the writer's team of the anthology film...
M.J. Kang is a playwright, actor, director, improviser, and storyteller. She is the first Korean-Canadian playwright to be produced professionally. She has had nine plays produced at Tarragon Theater, Theater Passes Muraille, Factory Theater, and many others. Her play, Asians Dating, was featured in Pan Asian Rep's NuWorks Festival 2021 in New York City, Son of Semele's Quick Creation Festival 2020 in Los Angeles, and was one of the winners of Camarillo Skyway Playhouse's Voices Not Heard Playwrighting competition. Her current play, Pretender, was developed as part of the Playwrights Group at Company of Angels, where it received a virtual public reading and will be part of Morgan Wixson Theater's inaugural New Works Festival.
She is currently on the writer's team of the anthology film, Moving Day, produced by Cotton Bush Productions, based in Montreal. Her contribution to Moving Day is a sci-fi genre piece entitled, Assimilation.
Her play, Hee Hee: Tales From The White Diamond Mountain, was recently featured as part of NYU's Theater For Young Audience Festival 2021, and will be part of Shakespeare in Action's upcoming season in the summer of 2022. Her recent commissions include; AFO (NYC), Shotgun Players (Oakland, CA), and Portland Playhouse (Portland). She has won 5 Moth story slams and many other story slams. Her personal stories have been featured on PBS and NPR affiliate. Her solo show, The Winner, which won a scholarship at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, made its debut in August 2021. She developed it during her time with The Barrow Group's Restorative Stories, led by Broadway director Seth Barrish.
As a director, she has directed around the world, and she recently is one of the narrators of Scholastic's YA graphic novel, The Girl From The Sea. She currently lives in Montreal and Los Angeles. She also recently filmed a 2 part guest starring role on a CBS television show.
Upcoming projects include a devised theater piece with Judith Thompson on mental health issues through Workman Arts in Toronto. She will also be competing in various grand story slams.
As an improviser, she's been a member of various international troupes, including the house team at The Nursery Theater in London, UK, an all-female/non-binary troupe, Don't Mess, and a majority Asian American troupe, Killer Kimchi. They've performed all over the world.
MJ received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Best New Independent Play, been playwright in residence at Theater Passe Muraille and Nightwood Theater and have taken part in Tarragon Playwright's Unit, Banff Playwrights Colony, and been a panelist for National Endowment for the Arts, Ontario Art Council, and Toronto Art Council.