Kanika Asavari Vaish is an NYC-based writer, director, producer, and performer. She was born in New York, and spent her teenage years in Mumbai, India. Her work focuses on themes of hope, transformation, and community, and she believes in using theater to facilitate collective healing, social resistance, and self-empowerment.

She is an MFA Playwriting graduate of Columbia University School of the Arts and a proud alum of Wellesley College. Her senior thesis, a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories entitled Jet Lag, advised by Octavio Gonzalez, won the Charlotte Paul Reese '38 Memorial Prize for Creativity in a Collection of Short Fiction.

She is also the co-founder of Fresh Lime Soda Productions, a South Asian theater ensemble and incubator that seeks to dismantle traditional barriers to access in theater, focused on producing virtual and in-person politically-motivated new plays and talkbacks, connecting early-career artists with one another, and fostering a social community for South Asian artists and theater-lovers around the world.

You can read some of her plays on NPX. Full resumes (Playwriting, Directing, Acting, Administrative) are available upon request.