TEAM BIOS
Nawaaz Makhani Creator, performer, co-director, actor
(he/him/his)
Nawaaz Makhani is an educator, multi-disciplinary artist and activist. As a second-generation South Asian Muslim Canadian living uninvited on unceded Indigenous lands of Turtle Island, Nawaaz’s intersectional identity is at the core of his exploration of existence in the world today. Nawaaz explores these lived realities through storytelling, poetry, spoken word, water marbling, and other artistic practices, including tabla (a Northern Indian percussion instrument). His work and community-based collaborations explore themes of identity, mental health, consent culture, toxic masculinity, generational trauma, and decolonization. Nawaaz is on a journey to build community and relationships with other curious people who are interested in breaking down barriers towards a more hopeful future.
Tiffany Wu co-director, creative director
(she/her/hers)
Tiffany Wu is a Canadian-Hong-Kongese web designer by day, creative chameleon by night. She brings creative projects to life including music videos, full-length albums, poetry-music showcases – from conception to completion. Her background in Advertising & Art Direction fuels her muscles in strategic planning and heart-centered storytelling. Grateful to be a part of community-driven makers and thinkers, she takes on the task of translating seeds of ideas into building blocks in collaborative spaces to breathe stories to life.
Robin McNaughton producer
(she/her/hers)
Robin McNaughton is a community development professional with a focus on program design, impact evaluation, and funding. Robin lends her community facilitation, resource mobilization, and project management skills to CQC Arts productions, along with her neurodivergent powers of hyperfocus and creative chaos. Raised with deep gratitude and some complicated feelings as a white kid in Southeast Asia, Robin supports community arts initiatives to ground herself in all the borrowed places she calls home.
Lamesha Ruddock tour producer
(she/her/hers)
Lamesha Ruddock is a cultural producer, performance artist, and historian, and the Creative Director of Blemme Fatale Productions, a producing company working across live performance and supplementary schools in the UK and Canada. Her practice centres 20th-century Black British feminist history and Black diasporic research, embedding rigorous historical inquiry into contemporary cultural production that is socially grounded and community-facing.
Lamesha was Co-Executive Director of Boundless Theatre and General Manager at Shadowland Theatre. She is currently a Producer for Luminato Festival (2024-) and has produced for CQC Arts, Pleasance Theatre and Theatre Royal Stratford East.
Lamesha is an Access Support Worker for Arts Council England, Vice-President of Membership at Alumnae Theatre and Chair of Paprika Festival. She is based between London, Toronto, and Jamaica.
Chiranjit Mukherjee musical director
(he/him/his)
A well accomplished name in the field of Indian Classical Music, Chiranjit Mukherjee was born in 1984 into a family full of music admirers. His initial training in Tabla was started under the guidance of his first Guru Shri Sailesh Kumar Chakraborty. Chiranjit’s thirst for knowledge and passion for the music followed by the sense of belongingness with the tradition made him search the roots and branches of Indian Classical Music. The bud of a musician’s heart started blossoming.
Chiranjit is acknowledged for his illustrious and robust performance of Benaras Gharana. He is influenced with the style and principle of the living legend of Benaras genre Padma Shri Pandit Kumar Bose who recognized Chiranjit as his disciple for the last 23 years. His sincerity was reflected in his academic performances when he was bestowed with the honor, First class first in his graduation and post graduation from the esteemed Rabindra Bharati University. An erudite performer of his generation, Chiranjit blends the mood and music with proficiency, drawing on his extensive research and resourceful imagination.
Jimmy Hogg dramaturg
Jimmy Hogg is a writer, comedian, actor, director and storyteller who has made his name on the Fringe circuit over the last 20-years with his high-energy, physical, tangential style. Shows include Curriculum Vitae, Figgy Pudding, Like A Virgin, A Brief History of Petty Crime, Potayto Potahto and The Potato King. Comparisons to Eddie Izzard, Rik Mayall, John Oliver (and other British people) are frequent if not always accurate or deserved. He has numerous awards and merits and is a 18x BEST OF FRINGE WINNER.
Sashoya Simpson dramaturg
Sashoya Simpson is an Afro-Jamaican cultural leader and multi-disciplinary creator. Her artistic work embodies Caribbean folklore knowledge and cultural practices through traditional and contemporary expression. She’s the award recipient of the ArtReach Pitch Contest (2016), Emerging Arts Finalist for the Premier’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts (2017), Simminovitch Playwright Protege Finalist (2023) and her work has been shortlisted in the CANSCAIP Writing for Children Competition (2023). She founded The Walking Griot collective, which is dedicated to creating space for young Black audiences, with works inspired by Afro-Caribbean folklore and cultural practices. Her stage play, Lulu, recently won Patron’s Pick Award at Toronto Fringe Festival (2025) and her children’s picture book, The Instrument Maker, will be published in 2027 (Annick Press). She’s currently the Associate Artistic Director of the Watah Theatre and the Black Theatre School and is the 2025 recipient of Toronto Arts Foundation Che Kothari Artist and Instigator Award (2025) and a Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prizes protege (2025).
Lindsay Murray lighting designer
Lindsay Murray is a lighting designer who recently transitioned from the technical world of film lighting into live theatre, where she continues to grow her artistic practice. Her recent design work spans multiple community theatre productions in Mississauga, highlighted by Oliver with Theatre Unlimited, which earned a Broadway World Toronto nomination for Best Lighting Design. Her approach to lighting is story-driven with a focus on emotional impact and narrative depth. Lindsay is honoured to contribute to Bol, Brown Boy, Bol, supporting the intimacy and power of its story through lighting.
Arantza Luna lighting consultant
Arantza Luna is the Assistant lighting designer of Death of a Salesman and The Hobbit (Stratford Festival 2026). Assistant lighting designer of Macbeth, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Anne of Green Gables (Stratford Festival 2025). Apprentice lighting designer for Disney's Frozen, The Broadway Musical (Theatre Aquarius); production operator at City of Mississauga; followspot caller and operator for Echo by Cirque du Soleil; associate video designer for The Last Timbit (Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres); associate member of ADC 659.
Christine Wu sound designer
Christine Wu is a Hong Kong-born filmmaker and sound designer with a BFA in Film Production. Her short films have screened at Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Toronto Queer Film Festival, and Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, among others. Recent credits include sound design for the short Pot Bound (dir. Hingman Leung) and bol, brown boy, bol (Toronto Fringe premiere).
Damien Nelson publicist
Damien Nelson is a press agent with over 15 years of experience. She works with arts organizations and festivals including Toronto Fringe, Hamilton Fringe, Native Earth Performing Arts, Bowtie Productions, and many more. Damien is Vice Chair of the Board of Bad Dog Theatre Company, the editor of PartonandPearl.com, and co-founder of the Sketch Comedy Festival Association.
Milena Rzepa Sztainbok social media manager
Milena Rzepa Sztainbokis a Social Media Professional specializing in art and entertainment digital marketing. By day, she works with musicians in the Canadian music industry to help share their music's story and impact with the world! Milena is excited to work with Bol, Brown Boy, Bol and share this powerful story with the theatre community in Canada.
Twenty years of being a “coconut” has caught up to Nawaaz, who’s crashed into a dual crisis of identity and faith. Divine intervention sends him a musical Guru, who guides him on a journey towards self-acceptance and love.
Directed by Tiffany Wu, bol, brown boy, bol offers a rich musical landscape merging Indian classical music with 90s Bollywood nostalgia, grunge, rap, and hip hop. Weaving storytelling with the rhythms of tabla, creator and performer Nawaaz speaks up about the impact of Canadian racism on his identity and shares his story of finding his way back to himself.
Winner of the 2024 North (519): Best ofToronto Fringe Award, bol, brown boy, bol is a cheeky, heartfelt solo show about Nawaaz's journey of reclaiming his voice and cultural inheritance through learning tabla, a northern Indian percussion instrument.
Come for the story, stay for the chai, leave feeling seen.
Believed in by Inspirit Foundation’s inaugural 2025 New Narratives Fund.
This production contains references to racism, discrimination, colonialism, bullying and grief. Drumming and heightened emotional expression occur. Additional sensory details are available in the Access Guide.
SHOW DATES AND TIMES (70 MINUTES followed by post show talkback every show)
Every show will have a talk-back in the theatre and chai chats in the lobby after each performance
Preview Wed 20 May 7:30PM (masked mandatory)
Opening Thu 21 May 7:30 PM
Fri 22 May 7:30 PM
Sat 23 May 7:30 PM
Sun 24 May 2:00 PM
Venue: Aki Studio