Michelle Huynh

Michelle Huynh (she/her) is a theatre practitioner and performance studies scholar, specializing in traditional Asian performance, intercultural theatre-making, global Asian and transnational studies, and practice-as-research methodologies. She earned her PhD in Theatre & Drama from UC San Diego, and her MFA in Asian Theatre Performance and BA in Theatre and English from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. 

Her artistic work as a practitioner consists of directing, choreographing, and acting in productions that utilize and translate Asian theatre styles to the Western stage. She has been trained under master artists from all over the world in various Asian performance genres, such as Thai and Balinese dance; Japanese noh, kyogen, and kabuki; and Chinese jingju and chuanju. Her scholarship on transnational Asian performance exists at the intersection of cultural theory, postcolonial studies, Global South studies, decolonial pedagogy, and embodiment. Throughout her work, she uses an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates auto- and critical ethnography, performance studies practices, and archival methodologies. Her current research project explores how South Vietnamese identity and culture are uniquely found and sensed through the embodied practices of partying, nightlife, and pleasure in the homeland and across the diaspora. She has been invited to present at academic conferences, lead specialized workshops, teach lectures, and perform in theatre festivals in the US, Asia-Pacific region, and Europe to showcase both her scholarship and artistic work