Global Origins: REROUTED with Maya Zbib

Maya Zbib is a theatre director, performer, writer and co-founder and co-artistic director of Zoukak Theatre Company and Zoukak Studio, Beirut. Her work is process-oriented and is created in cycles of collective research with Zoukak, raising questions that aim to challenge the status quo in Lebanon; dealing with gender and sexuality, religion and power, history, violence… Her performances, including The Music Box, Silk Thread and The Love Project, have been presented at international festivals and venues in the Middle East, Europe, the United States, South America, North and East-Central Africa and South Asia. Zbib is a Chevening/KRSF Alumna (2007), Cultural Leadership International Alumna (2010), fellow of ISPA (2010), protégée of Peter Sellars – Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative (2011), finalist of Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award (2014 & 2020), message author – World Theatre Day (2018), honored within Cairo's 27th International Festival for Experimental Theatre (2020). 

Zoukak received the Ibsen Scholarship Award (2012), the Anna Lindh Foundation’s Euromed Dialogue Award for social resilience and creativity (2014), the honorary citizenship of the city of Palermo (2017), the Praemium Imperiale Grant for Young Artists – Japan Arts Association (2017), the Chirac Foundation Award of Culture for Peace (2017) and the Ellen Stewart International Award (2018).

Global Origins is a network and platform for international, multicultural and diasporic artists, founded by Aneesha Srinivasan and Emma Jude Harris. Global Origins are visiting lecturers at UK drama schools and venues including the Young Vic Theatre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Mountview Academy of the Arts. They specialise in writing with identity, ethical representation, and decolonising the canon and are working to decolonise the British conservatoire curriculum. Global Origins also produces events with the aim of giving space and resources to marginalised artists. ARE WE THERE YET? was a 2 day festival of multidisciplinary global work at the Bussey Building in October 2019. They have been curators and readers for Guildhall’s DISRUPT festival and Pint-Sized Theatre. They are currently developing a play titled 68 ways to have the perfect conversation by Aneesha, to be directed by Emma.