Keenan Shionalyn is a scholar, director, translator, and educator currently pursuing a doctorate in Drama and Theatre Studies. His scholarship explores theatre history through pockets of queer space and time, focusing on modernist theatre in Russia and Eastern European countries. Deeply concerned with the silences in the archive, he employs a performance-based ensemble methodology leveraging memory found within embodiment to explore historical dramatic texts filling in the gaps and building a queer archive. His most recent work involved translating and adapting three one-act plays by Russian playwright Mikhail Kuzmin resulting in the first English performance of this queer modernist collection. His work on and analysis of this project received a departmental award for Outstanding Graduate Thesis from Central Washington University. He received his B.S. and M.S.F.S. in Psychology from Southern Utah University and recently earned his M.A. in Theatre Studies from Central Washington University. Keenan’s other theatrical work includes stage management, directing for youth, and high school theatre education.

Russian Theatre, Theatre History, Queer Theatre, Queer Theory, Modernist Studies, Translation Studies, Pedagogy, and Performance-Based-Research Methodologies