TONIC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Trustee
With over 15 years of experience working in fundraising and project management, Bhavita is passionate about helping organisations grow and increase their impact. As Development Director at Shakespeare Schools Foundation she raised over £3.5m through sponsorship, trusts, individuals, DfE and statutory funders. She also produced innovative events in the West End, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, House of Lords and Downing Street. At Soho Theatre she is currently Project Director of their new 1,000 seat theatre in Walthamstow. Bhavita is also on the board of Jasmin Vardimon Company.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Events & Projects Coordinator
Charlotte (she/her) originally trained in musical theatre at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and performed professionally for several years. Since stepping away from the stage she has continued to embrace her passion for theatre in administration roles for partnerships and promotions agency Shine Creative Solutions and leading ticketing software provider Spektrix.
Charlotte is thrilled to be at Tonic working towards positive change in an industry that means so much to her.
Craig is Head of Customer Service at White Light Limited, having worked in a number of roles with the company since 2007. He holds an MBA from the University of Bradford specialising in organisational behaviour and cultural change. Craig was Change Manager for White Light during the company's major growth project (2015-17).
In theatre, Craig has project managed lighting supply contracts for major West End, UK and international productions since 2004. Craig has worked as a member of the lighting and stage crew on musical productions in the West End and holds a BA (Hons.) in theatre.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Interim Co - Chair
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Delivery Lead
- Delivery Lead - View Profile
After completing her acting training, Ellie (she/her) cut her teeth as a workshop facilitator under the wing of Loudmouth Education and Training, spending several years delivering work around relationships, sex and health education. During this time she started wondering ‘why does this sort of education have to end at eighteen?'. Recognising a particular need for positive change within the performing arts sector, she went on to study a masters degree in Performance Science at the Royal College of Music, which has given her keen insight into the psychological and lifestyle concerns that performing artists face today.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Senior Delivery Lead
- Senior Delivery Lead - View Profile
Fay hails from Glasgow and lived for a time in Berlin, before taking on a 7-month Dfid-funded placement as a Team Leader for Restless Development in Tamil Nadu, India. This experience of supporting a cultural shift within a community travelled with Fay to Britten Pears Arts, where she became Diversity Lead for the organisation. She sees equality, diversity and inclusion as vital to the future of the arts and believes passionately in our collective responsibility to effect positive change.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Customer Services Director at the House of Commons
Gabriela is Customer Services Director at the House of Commons, coach (CfPAC) and a trustee for Tonic Theatre, as well as the Association for Cultural Enterprises. She has a track record in operations in cultural and historic institutions, including Head of Visitor Services and Site Operations at the Royal Opera House, Deputy Director for Visitor Experience at the National Theatre and senior roles at the Barbican Centre, Arts Theatre, The Savoy Theatre and other West End venues with the Ambassadors Theatre Group.
Gemma Baxter is a values-driven facilitator and personal coach with over 15 years' experience of leading career development and participation projects in the performing arts. Committed to contributing to the development of a more equitable arts sector, Gemma supports individuals and teams to fulfil their potential.
Gemma delivers group and one-to-one sessions for a range of arts organisations including Theatre Royal Stratford East, Dance City, The Lowry, Home Slough and the National Theatre. From 2009 to 2020, Gemma worked at the National Theatre as Workforce Development Manager, which included running Step Change, a career development programme. Previous to that, Gemma held participation roles at the Royal Opera House, ROH Creative Partnerships and Garsington Opera.
Georgina is a community-led artist, creative producer and strategic consultant. She has worked in and with some of the UK's leading arts organisations (Roundhouse, Southbank Centre, The Barbican) and most recently, delivered a portfolio of work for the Culture Team at the GLA. She creates hyper-local interactive projects which amplify community voices and has been commissioned by Coney, Studio 3 Arts, The Working Party, Culture Mile, All Points East and Jerwood Foundation.
She consults across the arts and charity sector bringing inclusion and diversity to the heart of organisational growth and, with Tonic, has facilitated reflection processes and worked with Sadler's Wells and The Royal Opera House among others.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Delivery Lead
- Delivery Lead - View Profile
With a background in theatre, Gina (she/her) has worked within outreach and participation as a practitioner, project manager and facilitator for many years. This includes previously working as Out Of Joint's Education and Artist Development Officer and within the Creative Learning team at The Ambassador Theatre Group. She also runs her own company Spark, providing workshops on gender equality in schools. Prior to this, she trained and worked professionally as an actress.
Before becoming Delivery Lead, Gina was one of Tonic's Associates, including collaborating on the creation of the Participate programme, which works in training conservatoires helping students to examine historic patterns of power-abuse in the arts industries and challenge harassment today. Gina is committed to supporting the equality, diversity and inclusion of the arts and culture sectors and is thrilled to now be a permanent part of an organisation doing important work to effect positive change.
Hannah (she/her) has been working in stage management in and out of the West End since graduating in 2010. She took some time out of the hectic theatre world to focus on teaching in 2018 and spent three years working as Senior Stage Management Tutor at Mountview.
In January of this year she made the decision to return to the West End as a freelance ASM, allowing her to pursue other work and goals such as delivering workshops for Tonic, and adding another string to her bow by training to become a Wedding & Funeral Celebrant. Hannah's focus in life is to try and make the world even the tiniest bit better, and hopes to do that through Tonic's work.
Holly (she/her) is a Performance-Maker, Choreographer, Movement Director and Performer with a background spanning Theatre, Dance, Music and Live Art.
Concerned with re-claiming space - as a queer, female artist who grew up on benefits - she likes making anarchic work that seriously questions the traditional ways we're permitted to create and consume art. Holly specialises in devised, site-specific, immersive and inter-disciplinary performance for unusual spaces and audiences.
Job Titles:
- CREATIVE PRODUCER, ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
We devise and lead innovative and impactful change projects which get to the root of existing inequalities and make long-lasting and wide-spread change. Through our extensive training programme and one-to-one support for arts organisations, we are able to galvanise real change. The results of our work are felt across the UK and internationally.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Consultant
- Researcher
Kelsie Acton is a neurodivergent access consultant, researcher and choreographer. She is currently the Inclusive Practice Manager at Battersea Arts Centre, the world's first Relaxed Venue.
Her PhD research into the accessibility of timing in disability dance rehearsal was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and she completed a residency at Siobhan Davies Dance Centre (UK). She was the plain language translator for MsSweeney's The Audio Issue. She is a member of the Critical Design Lab, a multi-national, multi-institutional collective focused on access, disability and design.
As an access consultant she has worked with the Edmonton International Fringe Festival (Canada), the Citadel Theatre (Canada), Arts Pond (Canada), Caisson and Friends (UK), Hot Coals Productions (UK), and Freelancers Make Theatre Work (UK).
Lena (she/her) trained at Rose Bruford and is an actor, writer, coach and facilitator. She completed her MA in Race, Media and Social Justice and also qualified as a coach in Contextual Behavioural Science, both at Goldsmiths University of London. Her coaching work is focused on racial wellbeing and championing marginalised voices in the workplace and in arts training. As a facilitator her work is centred in anti-racism and inclusive practice, as well as, workshops exploring Resilience and Imposter Syndrome, which she provides to leading arts organisations and FDS drama schools.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Member of the Core Team
- Director - View Profile
Lucy (she/her) founded Tonic in 2011 with the ambition of creating a sea change in how theatre and the performing arts thought about and acted in regards to equality, diversity and inclusion. Over the subsequent years she created Tonic's ground-breaking range of programmes, methodologies and tools which have enabled individuals and organisations to achieve deep and sustained change. Today Lucy heads Tonic's work, overseeing strategy, managing key relationships and delivering projects, sessions and events alongside Tonic's team of facilitators.
Lucy is the author of two books: 100 Great Plays for Women and All Change Please - A Practical Guide to Achieving Gender Equality in Theatre, both published by Nick Hern Books. She is a regular speaker on diversity in the arts and her specialist subject: gender equality in theatre. She is a Director of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for women playwrights.
Lucy has 20 years' experience working in theatre and, prior to creating Tonic, was an award-winning director.
Read Lucy's blog about what Tonic has done in response to #MeToo.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Delivery Lead
- Delivery Lead - View Profile
Originally from Lisbon, Portugal, Mariana (she/her) completed her dance training at the Royal Ballet School in London. She then joined Northern Ballet where she performed a wide range of works and toured extensively across the U.K. In recent years she also developed her strengths as a choreographer, creating and directing "Little Red Riding Hood", a ballet for children (later filmed for CBeebies), and "Termagant", a piece that won Mariana the "Emerging Choreographer Award" in the Dance Open America Competition. Prior to leaving Northern Ballet, Mariana was a part of its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Panel, established with the help of Tonic.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Trustees
- Interim Co - Chair
Moira Buffini is a dramatist working across the fields of Theatre, Film and TV. Her plays include Welcome to Thebes and Dinner (Olivier nomination) and wonder.land, with Damon Albarn and Rufus Norris for the National Theatre; Olivier Award-winning Handbagged for the Tricycle; Dying for It (adapted from Nikolai Erdman's the Suicide) and Marianne Dreams (adapted from Catherine Storr's book) for the Almeida; A Vampire Story for National Theatre Connections; Loveplay for the RSC; Silence, which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, for Birmingham Rep; Gabriel (LWT Plays on Stage and Meyer Whitworth Awards) for Soho Theatre. Both Dinner and Handbagged have enjoyed successful transfers to the West End.
In film, her screenplays include Tamara Drewe directed by Stephen Frears; Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukanaga, Byzantium, directed by Neil Jordan and Viceroy's House co written and directed by Gurinder Chada. She has also written and directed a short film, Father and has been commissioned by BBC Films to write and direct her first full-length feature. Currently, she is co-creator and writer of Harlots for ITV and Hulu.
Nickie Miles-Wildin is a theatre director who loves telling stories that are full of hope, connection and community that challenge the structures of ordinary storytelling, reaching audiences that are sometimes excluded from theatre spaces and even stories. Her work challenges the preconceptions around disability and Nickie aims to put those narratives centre stage through her passion in new writing and devising.
Nickie has facilitated workshops both nationally and internationally exploring the creative use of integrated access and disability awareness training. She also mentors a range of artists in the sector.
Rachel is a director, coach and facilitator whose practice meets at the intersection of these three roles. Her facilitation work has included projects with the National Theatre, the Young Vic, Royal Opera House and the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme. She has a particular interest in access and has developed several pieces of work around creative access for theatres, drama schools and other arts organisations. As a coach and director, she has also created a strand of work around resilience and creative practice, and is keenly interested in how we sustain the wellbeing of arts professionals.
Rebecca (she/her) is a writer for TV and theatre. She has written extensively for young people and after being selected for the BBC drama writers programme, is developing a number of TV dramas with independent production companies and working with Peter Straughan on a TV series. She worked for a number of years for Clean Break, where she ran the Young Women's programme and delivered projects in women's prisons. She has worked extensively in domestic violence work, delivering training to the police and Social Services with Thangam Debbonaire, now Labour MP for Bristol West. She developed a gender-based violence prevention programme for schools for which she wrote a play and produced a film with National Youth Theatre.
Rebecca originally trained as an actor and worked in theatre, film and TV, some of her favourite work with Shane Meadows as Babs, Woody's mum in all three series of This is England and with Clio Barnard in the award winning film The Selfish Giant. She has since worked with Barnard on story and character development on her latest film Ali and Ava. Rebecca's work as a writer, as a teacher and facilitator, and with many charities she has worked with, has always at its heart been about challenging inequality and injustice, particularly around gender and class.
Robert (he/him) is a director/writer/dramaturg/theatremaker currently based in London, making art about people not listened to.
He creates performance work (live and recorded) that explores
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Office Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Freelance Technical & Production Director, Production Manager & Producer
Sacha is a freelance Technical & Production Director, Production Manager & Producer. Most recently, she worked as a producer on Punchdrunk's The Burnt City and was Technical & Production Director at Secret Cinema. Previously she worked with Mark Rubinstein Ltd, general managing and producing in the West End, she was Director of Producing & Planning at the National Theatre & Executive Producer at Shakespeare's Globe. Before going to the Globe she was Head of Production at the National Theatre heading up the workshop departments, production and stage management teams, developing and overseeing the production process of around 26 shows a year across the building.
For many years she was a Production Manager working extensively in theatre and events - touring, West End, international and at the National Theatre. As Production Manager, some of her production highlights were TINA - The Tina Turner Musical (West End), War Horse (Olivier), Frankenstein (Olivier), His Dark Materials (Olivier) and Jerry Springer the Opera (Lyttelton). As well as being a trustee for Tonic she is also a trustee for Cardboard Citizens.
Suzanne is a theatre director, creative producer, coach and researcher. She is Artistic Director of Maya Productions, a company making diverse theatre to make change, creating work that enables social chance and promotes racial justice in the arts. She was previously Education Director at Soho Theatre and has held Associate roles at Derby LIVE, Sheffield Theatres, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Immediate Theatre and the Barbican.
A Clore Fellow, Suzanne led a research project Where Am I? that highlighted the importance of Black, Asian and Ethnically Diverse Role Models and Leaders in relation to workforce diversity. At Maya she recently ran a coaching/mentoring programme to support ethnically diverse industry professionals during the pandemic. She has undertaken research projects, and facilitated group and one-to-one sessions for organisations including the National Theatre, Arts Council England, Home Slough and Southbank Centre.
She is a trustee for Immediate Theatre.
Zoë is a writer, facilitator, opera-maker and environmentalist who works at the intersection of the arts, health and climate justice. Her work centres underrepresented narratives and voices, very often exploring our relationship with the natural world, and has toured internationally and to venues across the UK.
As a facilitator she has worked for organisations including the Barts & NHS Trust, The Centre for Performance Science, The National Theatre and ENO. She is particularly interested in the power of rest, and how we can move beyond sustaining our mental health and wellbeing to co-creating practises that support flourishing in the context of the climate crisis. She is committed to creating a performing arts industry that holds values of kindness, empathy and self-care and its core.
She is a visiting professor of creative writing at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama.