Kynan Dias

Kynan Dias is an actor and award-winning screenwriter, born in Honolulu and raised in Las Vegas. Inspired at an early age by great American playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, Kynan taught himself to write feature-length screenplays as a 14-year-old high school student. He earned a B.A. in film from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he pursued acting, screenwriting, and directing. Later, Kynan earned his MFA in screenwriting from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he developed a love for writing TV sitcoms that were further nurtured during his time studying improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade.

As a writer, Kynan’s films tend to live within the thin space between the humorous and the tragic, in sarcastic dramas and in comedies that hurt. As an actor, he is often hired to cry in comedies. With Lester Ryan Clark, Kynan co-hosts a series of film history podcasts on the TruStory.FM network that are meticulously researched yet lean heavily on improvised comedy.

Teaching at UNLV FILM since 2008, Kynan has developed a wide variety of courses in film production, directing, acting, screenwriting, and film studies, being especially proud of building classes such as Women in Comedy and Queer Cinema. His research interests include animation history, studio system economics, queer coding in classic film, and foregrounding previously unsung collaborators within major film authors’ historiographies.

IMDb • Kynan Dias