About us
Founded in 2021, spindle collective is an award-winning, womxn-led multidisciplinary horror-theatre company producing dark folklore works with original music that are political, immersive, and confrontational. Based in Toronto, we have toured our original works across Canada.
Natalia Bushnik (she/her)
Founding Member
Natalia is a multidisciplinary artist and playwright based in Toronto. She is fascinated by immersive experiences that examine morally grey territories and unnerve audience members in their complicity. She has received Dora Mavor Moore nominations for both her playwriting and performance. Her radio play, Just Across the Causeway, was produced through the National Theatre School’s #ArtApart Program, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council. A live version of Causeway was performed as a staged reading in the UK through Little Lion Theatre Company this past November, and was workshopped in Toronto through Pirate Life's Art + Water Program. Select theatre: Night at the Grand Guignol (Eldritch Theatre); SAMCA, síofra (spindle collective); I'll Be Back Before Midnight (Bruce County Playhouse) The Bathtub Girls (Kairos Theatre). Select film: Reacher (Prime); Revenge of the Black Best Friend (CBC Gem); peopleWatching (OutTV).
Kathleen Welch (she/her)
Founding Member
Kathleen Welch is a playwright, composer, director, and actor. Kathleen's play, Bluebeard's Wives is being developed through Coal Mine's Vault Creation Lab. Apart from her work with spindle, some select credits include performing as the Creepy Musician in Eldritch Theatre’s The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom; directing Riot King’s Dora Award winning production of Suddenly Last Summer; and composing the music for Just Across the Causeway (a radio play supported by the CBC Digital Strategy Fund). Kathleen is also one of the creators of the Dark Crop Festival, an all-night, outdoors, camping arts festival. Kathleen holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Windsor and is passionate about multidisciplinary theatre and plays that feature dangerous, amoral womxn.