LANA KOUCHNIR

BIO

Lana Kouchnir is a Ukraine-born, Toronto-based award-winning emerging actor and writer. She has shared her genre-bending performances for platforms such as the Toronto Summerworks Theatre Festival, the Vancouver Queer Arts Festival, Toronto Pride, the Undercurrents Ottawa Theatre festival, and Guelph University's Speak Easy Series. Lana was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts grant as part of the CBC Arts Digital Originals initiative to produce, write, and voice act for a short lyrical poetry video based on her poem, Odesa Caviar. She was named a longlisted finalist for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize and was awarded a finalist placement in the 2024 Room Magazine Short Forms Literary Contest. In 2023 she was awarded the Shevchenko Foundation of Canada Literary Arts Grant.  Lana completed a virtual 6-month film production mentorship program with Concordia University Television in 2021. In 2016 Lana graduated from the Transdisciplinary Arts Residency at the Watah Theatre; she was a recipient of the Watah Theatre's Outstanding Performance Award for her workshop presentation of Vovk, a monodrama created under the mentorship and dramaturgy of d'bi. young anitafrika. Her performances and writings are driven by a transdisciplinary approach to storytelling. Lana is a former City of Ottawa 'Youth in Culture' Youth Advisory Committee member and an alumna of the Diaspora Dialogues National Short Form Mentorship Program.