Donovan King is a professional actor, teacher, historian, and tour guide from Montreal, Quebec. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, a company that researches ghost stories and offers haunted tours, King hires professional actors to lead the tours and publishes a new ghost story every month on the Haunted Montreal Blog. King is also a performance activist and experimental theatreartist who juggles acting, teaching, directing, dramaturgy, and theory to create dramatic projects that challenge systemic oppression.[1] Known for his commitment to education and community, King assisted with the establishment of the Montreal Fringe Festival in 1991, is the author of Doing Theatre in Montreal and he set up the Montreal Infringement Festival in 2004.[2]
As the co-founder of the Optative Theatrical Laboratories (OTL) King strives to revitalise theatre as an agent for social change through experimental practice, critical theory, and sustained performance.[3][5][6] The OTL designs interconnected theatrical campaigns such as Car Stories,[7][8] that target instances of oppression, and employs a diversity of cutting-edge activist performance techniques: culture-jamming, Viral Theatre, Sousveillance Theatre, meme-warfare, Electronic Disturbance Theater, and Global Invisible Theatre, to name a few.[3]
In 2006, King took issue with racism inherent in what has been called "Canada’s First Play" – the 1606 The Theatre of Neptune (Le Théâtre de Neptune) by Marc Lescarbot.[3][9] OTL staged a counter-performance called "Sinking Neptune" in Annapolis Royal on the day of the "400th Theatre Anniversary" (November 14, 2006),[10][11] in order to protest the original.[12][13]
In 2012, Donovan King was invited to the first World Fringe Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, a gathering of Fringe administrators from round the world. Participating with a critical eye to corporate manipulation at Fringe Festivals, King published an article following the Congress called " World Fringe Congress to welcome infringement festival" that examines some of the more contentious issues, such unethical corporate sponsorship, pay-to-play fees and the trademarking of the word "Fringe" in Canada.[14]
King was invited back to the 2nd World Fringe Congress in 2014, again in Edinburgh, to deliver a workshop called "A World Fringe Philosophy" where he called on stakeholders to create policies at Fringe festivals to protect artists, spectators and communities from excessive corporate manipulation.[15]
The 3rd World Fringe Congress in 2016 was moved to Montreal and hosted by the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF),[16] an organization that trademarked the word "Fringe" in Canada. King responded by moving the Montreal Infringement Festival from June to November, to coincide with the World Fringe Congress and also created the World Infringement Congress, held immediately after the original event, to examine issues being ignored, such as the "Fringe" trademark.
This time, all potential World Fringe Congress delegates had to apply to participate. The applications of King along with other organizers at the Montreal and Buffalo Infringement Festivals were rejected without explanation, raising questions about exclusion and censorship at Canadian Fringe Festivals.[17] Buffalo burlesque artist Cat McCarthy wrote an article in Buffalo's The Daily Public denouncing the decision and calling for a resolution to the conflict. King responded by inviting CAFF representatives to a Canadian Parliamentary-style debate at the World Infringement Congress regarding their trademark on the word "Fringe".[18]
More recently, King has been challenging systemic racism and discrimination in Montreal's tourism industry, specifically at Tourisme Montréal, the Institut de tourisme et d'hôtellerie du Québec, the A.P.G.T. (Association professionnelle des guides touristiques) and the City of Montreal, which has by-Law G-2 that prohibits tour guides outside a cartel of mostly white guides.[19]
