Kelli Coleman Moore

Kelli Coleman Moore is an actor, director, and a scholar. She holds a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the Associate Director and Company Manager of Lit Moon World Theatre Company which recently performed King Lear at the Craiova Shakespeare Theatre Festival. Additionally, she has travelled with Lit Moon to festivals in Yerevan, Armenia, as well as Bialystock, Poland. In Spring 2026, she directed David Mamet's Oleanna at Pepperdine University in their Black Box Theatre.  She co-directed and produced a stage reading of Branden Jacob-Jenkins Gloria Spring 2024 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the tragedy in Isla Vista, and has an article under review with . Kelli has taught various courses including Theatre History, Spirituality and Art, Theatre and Politics, Acting, World Performance and Writing.


Kelli's research explores the intersections of performance, memorialization, and ritual. Her dissertation Theatres of Violence: Memory, Architecture & the National Space looked at the cartographies of national memory in the United States. Specifically, she explored memorial spaces where the physical memorial was built on the site of the traumatic event. This included the 9/11 memorial, the National Civil Rights Museum (Lorraine Motel) in Memphis, TN, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.  Kelli is interested in how performance becomes an integral part in cultivating civil religion and collective identities and coalitions. Furthermore, her research explores how devised theatre serves communities as a form of critical engagement with national traumas.

She has also worked as an academic administrator on a number of grants and programs including the Institute of Religion, Media and Civic Engagement (IRMCE); Progressive Religions in Southern California, funded by the Ford Foundation; Public Theologies of Technologies of Presence (PTTP) funded by the Luce Foundation; and, the Study of U.S. Institute: Religious Pluralism and U.S. Presence funded by the Department of State, Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs. This program hosted 18 foreign scholars from 18 different countries each summer to study Pluralism in the United States and Kelli served as the Program Director for 8 years.