ilayda mcintosh
multi-disciplinary creative
Ilayda is a playwright, actor & marketing manager based in Manchester and London.
Ilayda graduated with a BA (Hons) English and Drama degree from Queen Mary University of London, in 2019. During her studies, she gained extensive experience across varied creative disciplines - including copywriting, social media management, community management and journalism.
Previous clients include Anomaly LDN, Warm Street, Evening Standard, Prime Video, Apple TV, Omnibus Theatre, Talawa Theatre Company & Queen Mary University of London.
As a theatre maker, actor and writer, Ilayda was worked with Nouveau Riche, Talawa Theatre Company, Theatre Peckham, Poetic Unity, National Youth Theatre, Blue Elephant Theatre, Intermission Youth Theatre, Arcola Theatre, Omnibus Theatre and more.
She has trained with Actors Class, Identity School of Acting, Generation Arts and National Youth Theatre, Soho Theatre Writer’s Lab.
Ilayda’s debut play, Hummingbird, was showcased at Blue Elephant Theatre as part of the Elephantology Festival in February 2023. The play has since been shortlisted for the Mustapha Matura Award 2024 and The Theatre Blacklist 2024.
She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Honey Theatre.
writing
Ilayda has amassed varied, extensive and diverse experience as a copywriter, journalist and creative writer.
She writes concise, focused copy in accordance to specific briefs and TOV objectives. As well as, informative, engaged and entertaining articles, reviews, interviews and opinion pieces.
Ilayda’s bylines can be found in Metro, Huff Post UK, The Voice Newspaper, The Common Sense Network, GUAP Magazine, Art Meets Culture, The Floor Mag, Evening Standard, Scape Roots Journal and more.
→ Full portfolio
acting / THEATRE MAKING
Ilayda was previously associate artist at Nouveau Riche and part of TALAWA’s debut Introductory Writers Group in 2022. She was also part of Poetic Unity and Theatre Peckham’s resident Spoken-Word Theatre Company in 2023, performing at Theatre Peckham.
As an actor, she trained with Mary Doherty’s Actors Class, Identity School of Acting, Generation Arts and National Youth Theatre. She has worked with Theatre Royal Stratford East, Intermission Youth Theatre and her writing has been shortlisted for the Vault Five Award.
She wrote, directed and performed in multiple scratch performance evenings with Offshoots Theatre’s at Golden Goose Theatre.
Ilayda’s debut play, Hummingbird, was showcased at Blue Elephant Theatre as part of the Elephantology Festival in February 2023. Ilayda made her directorial debut with Hummingbird.
As a facilitator, Ilayda has run verbatim theatre based theatre workshops both online and in person, in collaboration with Nouveau Riche, NDT Broadgate and National Youth Theatre.
She is also the co-founder and artistic director of Honey Theatre, a creative collective and community championing bold storytellers of the global majority. Honey Theatre have produced multiple writing showcases and writers development programmes with Omnibus Theatre, Blue Elephant Theatre and SET Social Peckham.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Ilayda is also a freelance photographer specialising in digital and 35mm portraiture, editorial and documentary photography, as well as various videography projects.