Ayesha Maria Khan

Ayesha Khan

Ayesha (she/they) is an actor, singer, budding director, and writer, who now calls Toronto home. She takes a keen interest in the human psyche and the behaviour it elicits. She believes in the power of plurality in forms of knowledge and in states of being. She starts with empathy as a foundation for all she undertakes, artistically and personally.

Sydney Jinjoe

Sydney Jinjoe

Sydney Jinjoe (they/them) is an emerging creator who currently lives in both Tkaranto and the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. They firmly believe in creating work that utilizes live art’s capacity to imagine or even manifest alternative futures. Stemming from a desire to undermine hierarchies and forms of oppression of all kinds, they prefer to create collectively. They are particularly interested in creating event based performances, often integrating game, unusual objects, and community into their work. 

Outside of Paprika, Sydney is currently devising with a group of 6-11 year olds to create a piece about youth autonomy in the age of climate change. (Funded by Creative Spark Vancouver) Additionally, they work closely with their communities, focusing on mutual aid solutions to address food insecurity, houselessness, and mental health crises. They’re also a really good gardener.

Jonnie Lombard

Jonnie Lombard

Jonnie Lombard (they/them) is an emerging gender-queer theatre artist (and decent baker), who is currently kept up at night by brands tweeting as if they were sentient people. They are so excited to be involved with Paprika and the Creator’s Unit as they continue to dismantle the line between audience and performer and forge community through experimental performance. Jonnie’s practice centres on writing with the body, harnessing the fundamentals of time and space in the studio, and treating theatre as a place of deconstruction; where the familiar is taken apart to expose the absurdities underneath, and where a shared liberation from all binaries, routines, and pressures is possible. They will always find a way to incorporate baked goods into a performance, no matter how little sense it makes.

Nidhi Baadkar

Nidhi Baadkar

Nidhi Baadkar (she/her) is a dancer and movement artist with 15 years of training in South Indian Classical Dance form of Bharatanatyam and currently pursuing her contemporary dance training at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Her training also includes other forms like Indian martial art form of kalarippayattu, yoga, modern dance, physical theatre, and break dance. Nidhi recognises herself as an aspiring movement artist who wishes to develop a vocabulary of her own which is deeply rooted with Indian aesthetics. She has worked and performed in Kingdom of Bahrain, India, and Canada. Working towards diversifying into her production and arts management skills, she is the co-creator at Nautanki Creations, a dance collective based in Brampton, Ontario and was the co-curator of 2nd Nautanki Creations Festival 2021. Currently she is part of the Festival Curation and Program Administrator cohort of the Paprika Festival 2021 and Dance Advance- a choreographic development residency program by Sampradaya Dance Creations.

Natasha Advani Thangkhiew

Natasha Advani Thangkhiew

Mumbai born and Toronto based Natasha Advani Thangkhiew(She/Her) is a member of the Khasi and the Sindhi community from India. As a multidisciplinary artist, she wants to create her own work, while creating space and collectivity progressing with other previously underrepresented storytellers and their stories. She is a second-year student studying Devised Theatre, Playwriting and New Dramaturgy in York University. She enjoys experimenting with different media of storytelling. During the lockdowns, she wrote, directed, and acted in a short film titled MIRROR, which premiered in Paprika Theatre Festival 2021. Since moving to Toronto in September, she has conceptualized and modeled in a photoshoot campaign based on visible skin difference and acceptance in BIPOC communities for an upcoming magazine by the Flaunt it Movement. She aspires to be a storyteller in different industries, and has started content writing and branding consultancy for companies.

Alyx Cameron

Alex Cameron

Alyx, aka Cloud (she/her), is a theatre artist, musician, and performer from the GTA. Outside of Paprika, she has performed and collaborated with theatre companies and artistic organizations such as Nightwood Theatre (2022 Innovators), Toronto Fringe (2018+2022 as performer, 2021 with TENT), Crane Creations Theatre Company (2020 Summer Ensemble), Theatre Gargantua (2020 Emerging Artists’ Roundtable), Blackwood Gallery, and The Power Plant.

She is excited by theatre because it represents a synthesis of the arts. As such, her work seeks to cross disciplines and media forms, including visual art, digital media, and music. In doing so, her work can be seen as an allegorical reflection of the kaleidoscopic, cross-boundary experience of existing across multiple intersections, particularly of gender and race, as well as extending gratitude towards the multiple communities she is a part of.

With generous OAC Recommender Grant support from Nightwood Theatre, Obsidian Theatre, and Buddies in Bad Times, she is currently devising a performance piece titled Dreams, and she is excited to share hers with you very soon.

Sydney Jinjoe

Sydney Jinjoe

Sydney Jinjoe (they/them) is an emerging creator who currently lives in both Tkaranto and the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. They firmly believe in creating work that utilizes live art’s capacity to imagine or even manifest alternative futures. Stemming from a desire to undermine hierarchies and forms of oppression of all kinds, they prefer to create collectively. They are particularly interested in creating event based performances, often integrating game, unusual objects, and community into their work. 

Outside of Paprika, Sydney is currently devising with a group of 6-11 year olds to create a piece about youth autonomy in the age of climate change. (Funded by Creative Spark Vancouver) Additionally, they work closely with their communities, focusing on mutual aid solutions to address food insecurity, houselessness, and mental health crises. They’re also a really good gardener.

Jenna Geen

Jenna Geen

Jenna Geen (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist. Their work as a composer and sound designer focuses on using sound as a tool to investigate emotional textures and moods—creating post-modern worlds rather than telling stories through more traditional ways. One of Jenna’s favourite ways to explore story is through the unification of movement with music and sound. Ultimately, Jenna wishes to utilize her various skills as an actor, dancer, and musician in order to create immersive work that challenges traditional theatre conventions, and asks profound questions.

Paul Smith

Paul Smith

Paul Smith (he/il, they) is a Thursday-born performer, creator, and facilitator from Stittsville, ON., currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto, ON. Today, he explores how narratives that center marginalized bodies can be adapted into stories of reclamation, innovation, and protest, and is interested in the symbiotic relationship between theatre and film. Outside of the Creators Unit, being a Program Assistant at PACT, and acting in Black Theatre Workshop’s Artist Mentorship Program, Paul is writing his autobio-myth “Anansi v. God(s)“, developing their artistic practice through the principles of Sankofa, and listening to Frank Ocean (on repeat).

Samantha Sutherland

Samantha Sutherland

Samantha (she/her) is a dance artist and choreographer based in Toronto, ON. She is proud to be an Indigenous woman of the Ktunaxa (ktoo-nah-ha) Nation. She graduated from the Arts Umbrella Dance Diploma Program in Vancouver, BC in 2018. After graduation Samantha worked with Lesley Telford and as a guest artist with Ballet BC in their production of Romeo and Juliet by Medhi Walerski. For the 2020/21 season she moved to Toronto and joined Red Sky Performance as an Associate Artist. During her time with the company she performed Flow choreographed by Jera Wolfe in Fall for Dance North 2020. Samantha made her choreographic debut in the Harvest Moon Showcase presented by O.Dela Arts in 2021. She was mentored by Olivia C. Davies and Alejandro Ronceria. She recently worked with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra dancing in an all Indigenous cast to music by Tom Jackson.