Who we are

Selina Thompson: Artistic Director

The Company is led by Selina, an artist and writer whose work has been shown and praised nationally and internationally. Her practice is chiefly concerned with grief, love, and the world to come, and she seeks to make work that is visually striking, and lyrical, even while grounded in politics. She has led the company since its inception in 2016, and is primarily concerned with it centering those historically excluded by the arts, without compromising on rigour or experimentation. 

Above all, she wants her work and the company to move through the world with integrity: what it says, does and thinks all in harmony.

She won the ISPA Distinguished artist award in 2023, and her credits, both with and outside of the company include  BBC4, BBC Radio 3, The Royal Court Theatre, The Public Theater and BAM as well as theatres across the UK, Europe, South and North America and Australia.

She is a Brummie, and a cat lady. 

Toni Dee Paul: Associate Director

Toni-Dee is an artist and a writer working across form, based in the UK. She has worked in a wide variety of contexts as a workshop leader, dramaturg, director, performer, facilitator, collaborator and ‘thinker-in-the room’. Their current body of work, made with ‘infectious warmth’ (Exeunt) is a series of performances & installations made for cemeteries, refugee centres, kitchens, churches and theatres. Since 2015 she has been commissioned by Fuel Theatre for the New Theatre In Your Neighbourhood project, been a contributing story group writer for climate justice project Hello X, created performance as public intervention for Queerly Departed, and presented works in SICK Festival, Queer Migrant Takeover and Works Ahead. 

Currently, she’s working on ‘Doze’ a chronic-illness centred project exploring rest as resistance. Outside of her solo artistic practice, Toni is Associate Artist of award winning company One Tenth Human making intricate, intimate, and wildly entertaining live imaginative events for children and families, and also facilitates part-mutual-care-part-art-making-part-activism project Balmy Army.

Toni -Dee is also a Trustee of Leeds based international performance festival Transform.

 

STL’s team has expanded rapidly over the last few months. We’ll introduce our new colleagues soon. 

 

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Board

Our Board of Directors consists of Lucy Pilkington (Chair), Baile Ali, Clare Clarkson, Emma Frankland and Tim Etchells.

Lucy is an award-winning producer, and founder of factual film & TV production company Milk and Honey. She mentors young filmmakers, is a lifelong campaigner for inclusion and diversity, and was the inaugural chair of the Royal Television Society’s Diversity committee. Lucy is a member of BAFTA, and has been appointed to the Edinburgh Television Advisory Committee. Lucy joined the Board in November 2022.

Baile is an artist, chef, sound-engineer, and co-founder of of Leeds-based Sable Radio – an online radio station and creative platform. Sable broadcast, run workshops, produce podcasts, support artists, and curate programmes in a little studio on the outskirts of Leeds. Baile worked with STL on the project In Public Space which was delivered in summer 2022. He became a board member for the company in April 2022.

Clare is Deputy Director of Cast, a mid-scale theatre in Doncaster. She lives in West Yorkshire and or the last 25 years has had a career in the arts working in senior roles at organisations such as Opera North, Theatre Royal Wakefield, and Yorkshire Dance. She joined the board in June 2018.

Emma is a live performance and theatre artist. In recent years Emma’s work has been focussed on the None of Us is Yet a Robot project a series of performance pieces recently published by Oberon Books as “None of Us is Yet a Robot – Five Performances on Gender Identity and the Politics of Transition”. She became a board member for the company in July 2019.

Tim is an artist and a writer based in the UK whose work shifts between performance, visual art, and fiction. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Entertainment, who were awarded the International Ibsen Award 2016 for their ground-breaking contribution to the field of contemporary theatre and performance prestigious Spalding Gray Award in February 2016. He became a board member for the company in July 2019.