Tanika Lay is an independent actor, director, writer and performance-maker based in Bristol. 

She is a founding member of One Foot Theatre Company, a York-based theatre company championing new writing and creating original work. Tanika co-directed the company's first production Words a Bullets by Butshilo Nleya (developed by One Foot), after having co-directed the Words as Bullets showcase in February 2019. Words as Bullets featured both at York's Festival of Ideas 2019, and The Great Yorkshire Fringe 2019.

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Recently Tanika has directed an online production of Midsummer, a play with songs by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre. The play was adapted into the form of four monologues by Lay and the small Midsummer company, with permission from the playwright, in order to fit the new specifications of the online format, following the venue's Covid-19 policy. The production received high acclaim from within the university and the company hope to take the production further post-pandemic.

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Currently Tanika is working on Shakespeare's Rivals 2020, assisting the director, University of York Professor, Michael Cordner. 

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From 2019 until the present, Tanika has collaborated with fellow students at the University of York to develop TheLittleSprout Collective: a York-based arts collective, hosting daytime workshop events, and evening gig events. TheLittleSprout Collective invite a range of different groups of students and non-students alike to join and participate in the events. 

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In 2019 Tanika took on the role of Assistant Director for the university's largest arts society CHMS (Central Hall Musical Society) in their February Flagship Show, Legally Blonde.

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Tanika has performed a variety of roles over her time in university, including assistant director, set designer, costume designer, press and publicity officer, co-lighting designer, script-writer and developer, devising artist and various performance roles, for both curricular and extra curricular projects. These include Adrian Mitchell's The Government Inspector (after Gogol), Three Women Walk into a Bar (an original play-text, written by Lay, among others), Mike Lew's Bike America, and a duologue (with a live cello accompaniment) named 'Space', which was adapted from a text by polish Happenings artist Tadeusz Kantor, and performed at Spread, York, an experimental music event created by music alumni from the university.