Jivesh Parasram

Co-FOUNDER (He/Him)

Jivesh is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, and facilitator of Indo-Caribbean descent. His work has toured Nationally and Internationally. Jiv is the founding Artistic Producer of Pandemic Theatre, and became the Artistic Director of Rumble Theatre following three years as the Associate Artistic Producer at Theatre Passe Muraille. He was a member of the Cultural Leader Lab with the Banff Centre and Toronto Arts Council. His public service work has included collaborations with the Ad Hoc Assembly, The Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and as an advisor to the National Arts Centre. His current cultural practice centres decolonization through aesthetics.

Contact: jiv (at) pandemictheatre (dot) ca

Tom Arthur Davis

Co-FOUNDER (He/Him)

Tom is a theatre artist, producer, and project manager. Originally from the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation (Ottawa) with colonial lineage from the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq peoples (Newfoundland), he has recently relocated to Lekwungen territory (Victoria), after spending most of his career in Mississauga-Anishinaabe-Haudenosaunee territory (Toronto).

In 2009, he co-founded Pandemic Theatre (then less distastefully named), for which he has acted as the Artistic Director since its inception. From 2018-2022, Tom worked with Why Not Theatre, acting as a Managing Producer where he led artist support programs such as RISER, Space Project, and ThisGen Fellowship. From 2014-2019, Tom worked with the Toronto Fringe in multiple capacities, including as the inaugural director and program designer of TENT, an educational program that teaches entrepreneurial skills to emerging theatre artists. From 2022-2023 Tom worked with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival as the Interim Director of Programming.

Currently, he is working with the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres, helping to organize their annual Indigenous youth conference, Gathering Our Voices.

Contact: tom (at) pandemictheatre (dot) ca

David Mesiha

Associate Artist (He/Him)

David is Toronto & Vancouver based award-winning music composer, sound/video designer and Theatre maker and is co-artistic director at Theatre Conspiracy. David’s practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts.

As Interactive Experience Designer at The Cultch’s Digital Storytelling team, David is developing unique trans-media experiences that leverage and expand theatrical story-worlds and utilize a wide range of technologies and techniques including Mixed media, Web based and live content and recently has begun development on AR/VR experienced.

Chosen credits include as co-creator & Music Composer for the award winning show Foreign Radical (Theatre Conspiracy). Sound designer for The Humans (Arts Club Theatre), Antigone (YPT), Oraltorio (IFT), Sound of the Beast (Theatre Passe Muraille) and Terminus (Pi Theatre). Mixed Media: Miss Vancouver, The Relay, Forget Me Not (Online components). Film & TV: +-40, Spirit Glitch, The Mission, Toward You.

David currently is a core member of The Cultch’s Digital Storytelling Team, focusing on creating innovative trans-media experiences. He is also leading the development and creation of Same Difference, an immersive mixed media theatre piece that deconstructs issues of identity, belonging, sameness and difference through the view point of immigrants and refugees. 

En Lai Mah

Associate Artist (He/Him)

En Lai is a T’karonto-born settler of far & wide descent, a movement artist, martial arts practitioner, choreographer, theatre maker, and Dora-nominated performer. He now resides in Vancouver, on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

His movement practice is a fusion of traditional Shaolin Kung Fu coupled with contemporary dance. His focus is to create an intuitive form of physicalized storytelling, which aligns the chaos of the mind with the rooted knowledge of the body. 

Past ventures include, being the lead artist on Money Moves (Mayworks), a community based project, collaborating with newly immigrated Chinese Canadians who faced exploitation as employees in grocery stores, at the hands of their own community. Through engaging with creative movement, the workers transformed their adverse experiences into movement based protest art. En Lai was a participant in the Banff Arts Centre’s Playwrights Lab, to further his exploration of the intergenerational transmission of culture & healing through storytelling. He was featured in the Wee Asians series as a part of the Reel Asian Film Festival, where he attempted to share with little Asian children & friends, the joy of reimagining one’s reality through movement.

Past Team Members

Michael Clarke
Mike Conley
Ryan Cooley
Tara Grammy
Jessica Rose
Alex Rubin