Theatre
Fight Director
Anita has been a fight director for theatrical events and productions including the Stratford Festival, the Blythe Festival, Carousel Players, the Centaur Theatre, the Segal Theatre for the Performing Arts, the Charlottetown Festival, Soulpepper Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Neptune Theatre, and Shakespeare in the Park.
Anita served as associate fight director for the Canadian Opera Company on the productions of Don Quichotte, Die Walkure and Carmen.
She has also been a fight director for puppet shows, including Artichoke Heart Collective’s production of We Walk Among You.
Stage Combat Instructor
Anita has been teaching stage combat at The National Theatre School in Montréal since 2015. She also teaches stage combat workshops at high schools, art schools, drama festivals (DramaFest, Shakespearience), and at the Stratford Conservatory.
Intimacy Coordinator
Anita has worked as an intimacy coordinator on productions including Our Place for Cahoots/Theatre Passe Muraille, Trojan Girls and the Outhouse of Atreus for Outside the March and Factory Theatre, Maggie for Theatre Aquarius, and Fall on Your Knees for Canadian Stage. Learn more »
Anita’s Theatre Bio
Selected Fight Director and Sexual Choreographer credits include:
- Stratford Festival 2024 Season
- Midsummer Night’s Dream (Perchance)
- Bad Roads (Crows)
- Roberto Zucco, Angels in America (Buddies in Bad Times)
- The Retreat (Imago)
- Truth (YPT)
- Jesus Christ Superstar (Here For Now)
- WildWoman (Soulpepper), Hamlet (The Rose, Shakespeare in High Park)
- Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes (TIP)
- Fall on Your Knees (CanStage/NAC/The Grand)
- Counter Offence (Segal Centre)
- Fairview (Canstage)
- Prodigal (Crow’s Theatre)
- Trojan Girls and The Outhouse of Atreus (Outside The March/Factory Theatre)
- Our Place (Cahoots/TPM)
- The Last Wife, The 39 Steps, Successions (Centaur Theatre)
- Whole World (Carousel Players)
Selected Stunt Performer/Stunt Actor credits:
- Slasher
- Twisted Metal Season 2
- Law & Order: Toronto
- SEE
- Star Trek: Discovery
- Pretty Hard Cases
- Titans
- The Boys
- Rabbit Hole
- What We Do in the Shadows
- various Ubisoft motion capture productions
Upcoming Theatre Projects:
- Stratford Festival 2025 Season
- Craze (Tarragon)
- The Bidding War (Crow’s)
- Fat Ham/Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (CanStage)
Upcoming Film/TV Projects:
- Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
- Copenhagen
- Kiss of Death
Romeo and Juliet, Stratford Festival
“A sense of primordial violence defines the Stratford Festival’s latest revival of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ In director Sam White‘s Verona, the town square hisses with the sound of warring swords splitting the air.”
Joshua Chong, Toronto Star (June 5, 2024)
Bad Roads, Crow's Theatre
“The violence is handled more or less tastefully (though your mileage may certainly vary) by fight and intimacy director Anita Nittoly, evoking unsettling imagery without ever having the actors touch – a worthwhile payoff to a staging convention used throughout the entire production, established under far less dire circumstances.”
Ryan Borochovitz, Intermission Magazine (November 12, 2023)
WildWoman, Soulpepper Theatre
“It’s a very physical play with a lot of fighting and fucking. Anita Nittoly, the Fight and Intimacy Director, earns her fee ten times over.”
Opera Ramblings (October 10, 2023)
WildWoman, Soulpepper Theatre
“What stands out to me the most thematically are the power and sexual dynamics in every single relationship on the stage. The intimacy direction by Anita Nittoly is incredibly thoughtful and story-driven, simple yet effective at telling the story of different kinds of sex.”
Andrea Perez, Intermission Magazine
(October 16, 2023)
Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, Thousand Islands Playhouse
“One is keenly aware of the work of Anita Nittoly, the intimacy director. How each character touches the other is beautifully established…”
Lynn Slotkin, The Slotkin Letter (September 29, 2023)
Fall on Your Knees, Neptune Theatre
“The violence portrayed onstage, with fight choreography by Anita Nittoly, is unflinching and tough to watch. I heard many people in the audience viscerally responding to the play’s most intense scenes. In reality, these moments are hidden within the walls of a home, but we are being asked as audience members to acknowledge it out in the light and not to allow it to simply fade from our collective consciousness.”
Amanda Campbell, TWISI theatre blog
(February 13, 2023)
Fall on Your Knees, The Bluma Theatre
“Under Anita Nittoly’s direction, the stage violence is convincingly handled, but almost to a fault: it is gut-wrenching to watch and hear episodes of domestic battery over and over again as they’re replayed in the characters’ memories, and this could be triggering to those particularly sensitive to such material.”
Karen Fricker, The Toronto Star
(January 28, 2023)
The Rez Sisters, The Stratford Festival
“Scenes begin to break down into raucous battles as various tensions are exposed and fight director Anita Nittoly’s remarkable choreography mirrors the many conflicts…”
Dave Rabjohn, Onstage Blog
(August 20, 2021)
Fences, The Grand Theatre
“The fight scene involving Williams (father/Troy) and Nabea (son/Cory) using the baseball bat was heart-stopping. It was so well choreographed that the audience gasped with each shove and swing of the bat, to the credit of fight director Anita Nittoly.”
Mary Alderson, Entertain This Thought
(March 3, 2019)
Blood
“The play has a lot of physicality. Fight Director Anita Nittoly has done an impressive job. The confrontations are absorbing. The chemistry between Duarte and Chambers is obvious and believable.”
George Perry, Mooney on Theatre
(October 2, 2010)
