"It's Melinda's voice, harnessing power and fragility, sass and sexiness, Broadway and barroom, that grabs you..." 
~ The Muse's Muse

"Imagine Cher in one of her sheer costumes getting drunk at Lilith Fair and hijacking the stage during Jewel's set."
~ Indie-Music.com

Melinda Gidaly Mayor is a vivacious performer and writer whose critically acclaimed work has won over audiences around the world. Her recent play, Jew! (A Musical), premiered at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in Canada and subsequently made its UK debut at Lost Theatre's One Act Festival in London. In Jew!, Melinda uses her considerable talents in music and comedy to share a story of searching for her religious identity while simultaneously planning her wedding. An honest, witty, and engaging performance that connects with all, Melinda looks forward to expanding this show in the future.

"Mayor is hilarious, and her songs are sharp and clever.... So warm and uplifting that it gave me the shivers."
~ Marty Green (Yiddish performer and translator of On Foreign Soil: True Stories of a Wandering Jew)

From performing comedy at the Jokin' in the Girls' Room cabaret (presented by all-female comedy troupe 30 Helens) to acting as playwright for The Interview (presented by the Walking Fish Festival, and deemed by The Georgia Straight as "best of set"), Melinda definitely enjoys provoking through performance. Favourite roles include Nancy Squeers and the Infant Phenomenon in Charles Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, female leads Libby Tucker in I Ought To Be In Pictures and Connie Dayton in Come Blow Your Horn (both by Neil Simon), and loud, vibrant songstress La Coca, a character she created for the puppet cabaret From Inside the Circus Tent.

"Cheeky and somewhat melodramatic." ~ Collected Sounds

As a singer-songwriter, Melinda has released two critically acclaimed albums: Her debut, Quiet Loathing Girl, led to numerous performances (including an appearance at Vancouver's Indie Waste Music Festival) and paved the way for her second release, This Mortal Lust. Featuring crafted songwriting and powerful melodies, Lust has been lauded as "an impulsive and entertaining collage of emotions" (Splendid magazine) and was deemed by Ashley Petkovski of The Muse's Muse to be "100% musical firepower". Melinda's latest focus, musical theatre, serves as the inspiration for her next project, a collection of her favourite songs from the shows, which she plans to record later this year.

"Soft and haunting at times, loud and bawdy at others." ~ Rambles

From stand-out roles such as the sequinned singing sensation Celeste Romano (the straight-from-Las Vegas diva of Tony n' Tina's Wedding) to her own musical interpretation of getting hitched in Jew! (A Musical), Melinda is an in-demand performer who enjoys her work immensely. She looks forward to creating more theatre that uses both comedy and music to connect with others, especially across cultural boundaries: A Canadian with American roots who has lived in London, England for the past year and a half, Melinda has just made the move to Paris, France. She is currently workshoping her newest piece, Coffee and Swordfish, and plans to tour it as soon as she can say "café et espadons" without laughing, or with a credible French accent. Whichever comes first...