Photo by Ste Murray, 2024
John King is a theatre director based in Dublin, working between the UK, US and Ireland. In 2025, he directed three world premieres: Pea Dinneen: Raising Her Voice (Project Arts Centre - winner, Best Production at Dublin Fringe), Static (Abbey Theatre), and Oh My Pain! My Beautiful Pain! (Pleasance, London).
He is director of Murmuration, a collective of theatre and sound artists making big-hearted headphone shows in public spaces. Murmuration’s work is intimate and innovative, inviting audiences to listen closely and become alive to their surroundings. Their four shows to date - Summertime, Will I See You There, You’re Still Here and One Moment Now - have been presented in Dublin, Drogheda, Toronto, Philadelphia and, most recently, in Washington DC, where they won a Helen Hayes Award in 2025. Murmuration is a resident company at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin, 2024-27. www.murmuration.ie
Outside of shows co-written with Murmuration, John’s writing for theatre includes side-walks, somewhere in the Future Dark (Solas Nua, Washington D.C.) and ERIS (Bunker Theatre, London, 2018; Irish Rep reading series, New York, 2023). He has worked as an associate/assistant director for THISISPOPBABY, The Abbey Theatre, Irish National Opera and Studio Theatre. He was listed among the Irish Times' ‘50 People to Watch’ in 2021. John is an Associate Artist of Solas Nua, and a graduate of the National Theatre Directors’ Course and the Abbey Resident Director Programme. He was a 2024 Associate Artist with THISISPOPBABY and a participant on Six in the Attic at the Irish Theatre Institute in 2025. He holds an MA in 'Text and Performance' from RADA and Birkbeck, and a BA in English from the University of Cambridge.