Photo of Maya

Maya

“I was empowered by the whole experience of studying and performing in London which allowed me to make a positive shift in how I viewed myself as an artist.”

Main details

Occupation Theatre maker
Country Lebanon

Despite worries that she wouldn’t be able to get out of war-torn Beirut, Maya Zbib came to Goldsmiths in 2006, to study a Masters in Performance Making in the Department of Theatre & Performance.

Anna Furse, head of the department, praised Maya’s determination to succeed and create: “Maya proved an exceptional student both intellectually and creatively. She made memorable solos, astonishingly intimate and immediate.”

The degree helped shape Maya to become the progressive, political theatre-maker she now is in her native Lebanon. After returning to Beirut, she was one of six theatre makers to establish the Zoukak Theatre Company and Cultural Association. Their dynamic brand of political theatre was responding to a country in crisis, and their commitment to their shared vision, their ethics of collaboration and their quite out-of-date determination to work as a collective is an inspiration.

Anna described the Company as a force to be reckoned with: “Conversant with contemporary post-dramatic narrative and completely of their culture, their modus operandi, obsessions and drives not only promote the idea of the value of live practice in an increasingly mediatised age, but demonstrate that it is the totality of one’s approach to living that drives committed artistic creation, even in the face of political instability and economic threat.

“Zoukak, despite critical acclaim and their growing reputation, have no revenue funding and little opportunity for substantial sponsorship. Undaunted, they remain determined to survive, to keep their small studio base in Beirut open, and to continue their agenda of performance making and their social and therapeutic work,” she added.

In 2010 Maya was selected as Cultural Leader International by the British Council and was a fellowship recipient of ISPA New York. In 2011 she was selected by the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative to work with the American director Peter Sellars in the United States and to the Congo. Sellars calls Maya “an extraordinary and prodigious individual”.

Around the university