ILYANA KADUSHIN (Actor/Singer/Producer/Activist/)
www.ilyanakadushin.com

I was born in the spicy city of Miami, raised in the rural cornfields of Maryland, and educated at prep schools with the daughters of famous politicians and other assorted heiresses. As a child, I had the opportunity to travel with my parents to the Soviet Union, witnessing part of my ancestry and seeing first hand how much I had to be grateful for. This planted a travel bug in my soul and I continued to travel the world observing the people and cultures of many places. I then landed in New York City and attended the Tisch School of Arts Experimental Wing, winning the Tisch Award of Excellence upon graduation.
 
I immediately delved deeper into the world of performance, art, and music of all kinds: inspired by all the diverse ways of story telling. In music, I sang for the long running performance party, "Organic Grooves" as well as other electronic music producers. In the theater I performed at many venues such as: Playwrights Horizons, Here, The Public Theater, Knitting Factory, and the Ohio Theater. In the world of television, radio, and animation, I began doing voice over performing. All the while taking in the diverse New York life around me. I felt more and more that all these mediums must be intertwined to more truthfully express myself as an artist.  I then wrote and performed a one woman multi-media musical called "Devour the Apple".
This piece was about different generations of women in my family, their relationships to each other, and how they tried to fit into the world around them.

I have performed as both an Actor and Singer with companies that
include: Nickelodeon, Discovery, BBC America, Amnesty International,
Sesame Street Television, Harper Collins, Scholastic, Random House,
Cartoon Network, MTV and The Public Theater. My voice-over
performing work spans from numerous national commercials, animation,
and video games; like Lord of The Rings. I also narrated
the audio books of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling Twilight Saga Series.
    I am very inspired by my roles in activist performance projects.
Including: “True Body Project” at The Brooklyn Museum, a performance
instillation about empowering girls and women to connect to their true
bodies and voices. “Birth”, a play about women’s birth rights,
"Becoming Natasha", (co-produced by Amnesty International) about global sex trafficking of women and children;  CultureProject's Impact Festival about military crimes; and as a producer & performer of a music concert for World Wildlife Federation and Eve Ensler's V-day festival, to benefit the organization’s commitment to ending the cycle of violence against women around the globe.

In '99, I met my creative partner in crime, James Harrell, a fantastically talented multi-instrumentalist and composer. Together we have co-written and produced multi-media pieces as the duo Lythion, that bring together our diverse backgrounds as humans and artists.    . We started own company, LythionMusic Productions in 2007.
We compose original music for film, television, radio and stage.
In 2011, we co-produced and co-composed the music for the documentary film, "Separate, But Equal", (winner of 2011 HBO Documentary Film Award) about the photographer Henry Clay Anderson from Mississippi, whose collection of photos will be a permanent part of The Smithsonian Museum’s of African American History and Culture in 2016.