The Artist
Sina Gilani
Known on stage as Xina
Sina Gilani — Xina — is a Toronto-based actor, director, film and theatre-maker working at the intersection of ancient myth and contemporary urgency.
Their practice is rooted in the Greek dramatic tradition — not as a museum piece, but as a living system of questions. They return to Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus not for their answers but for the ferocity of what they ask.
Trained in classical and contemporary performance, Xina moves between acting, devising, and directing. Their work is physical, text-driven, and unafraid of the irrational — the place where language breaks and the body takes over.
Gaia Theatre is their company and their vessel — a space to make work that breathes like a living oracle, that holds the ancient and the urgent in the same breath.
Artistic approach
The Work
Ancient text, modern breath
Greek tragedy is not old. It offers room to explore. Xina works with classical texts as living material — translating, adapting, and breaking them open to find what they still demand of us.
The body as instrument
Before language, there is the body. Xina's practice treats physical presence as the primary text — the voice, the gesture, the stillness that precedes the word.
The chorus and the singular
Greek theatre invented the tension between the individual and the collective. That tension is still the most urgent thing on stage. Xina's work lives inside it.
Work with Xina
One-on-one sessions
Xina offers individual sessions for actors, artists, and seekers — one hour to explore text, character, voice, or whatever the work demands. Sessions run Monday through Saturday, 2 pm to 7 pm. Pricing by conversation.