Mairi Chanel
(she/they/he)
Mairi is a New Mexico-raised and New England-based theatre-maker, Shakespeare practitioner, intimacy choreographer, and writer. She is an Associate Artist with Incite Shakespeare Company, and will be receiving her certification as an Intimacy Choreographer for Live Performance from the Intimacy Professionals Association in spring 2026. Mairi was a founding member and served as Producing and Co-Artistic Director of &Sons Theatre from 2019-2024.
With an abiding infatuation with Shakespeare that began attending park productions as a small child, Mairi’s deep love of intricate language and emotional catharsis has led her to this vocation of story-telling. The stories she has always craved are wild, poetic, queer, experimental, and sometimes surreal, diving into the worlds of horror, science fiction, and fantasy to carve into the truth of what it is to be this strange animal called a human.
To this end, Mairi has spent their 18 years in professional theatre learning to buttress the work from all sides, artistically, technically, and administratively. Across theatre companies and productions she has fulfilled the roles of: Producer, Writer, Facilitator, Director, Educator, Actor, Designer (props sourcing and fabrication, set dressing, costumes), Company Advocate/Non-Equity Deputy, House Manager, and Movement/Fight/Intimacy Choreographer/Captain.
Why Theatre?
In watching a live performance together, humans often experience a communal cardiac synchrony, where heartbeats and physiological responses align, even between complete strangers. We experience true, physical empathy. When our ancestors were telling stories huddled together around fires in caves, they would have felt this synchrony.
As wonderful as it often is to have access to the inter-connectivity of the virtual world, this vital, in-person empathy is still a core need. Particularly as AI and bots blur our certainty of human connection online, the joy and relief of seeing other living, breathing people right in front of us, telling us a story in all their imperfection and vulnerability and messiness, cannot be overstated. This art form is ancient, and there is a reason it persists.
