MA Performance Making

"The MA Performance Making taught me to think conceptually, question my creative choices and develop a performance that subverts the audience's expectations. My fellow students were from across the globe and had varying interests; ranging from scripted theatre, dance, film and performance art. This diversity made for wildly interesting interdisciplinary collaborations."

"The MA Performance Making taught me to think conceptually, question my creative choices and develop a performance that subverts the audience's expectations. My fellow students were from across the globe and had varying interests; ranging from scripted theatre, dance, film and performance art. This diversity made for wildly interesting interdisciplinary collaborations.

Shortly after graduating, I was appointed as Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Regent's University London. I have been involved in practice-based research in Martial Acting where I explored how an actor embodies presence through the use of Zulu and Maori dance forms.  I have also developed methods of teaching acting for motion and performance capture, using puppetry techniques. Currently, I am developing a performance piece called '00:00 (Zero Hour)' that encapsulates what had inspired me at Goldsmiths - a performance that has a strong scenographic influence is metaphoric and transformative.

In 2018 and the summer of 2019, I have been working with Regent's University Alumni and current students on a devised piece entitled '00:00 (Zero Hour)'. The work was first performed at the 'From the Forest Festival' (2018) and is currently undergoing a period of research and development. This research applies my thinking around metaphor, transformation and scenography in performance. From this work, I also designed and wrote three new Regent's University university modules for the BA (Hons) Acting for Stage & Screen."

"For the one year I spent at Goldsmiths, I was not only a student, but I was also living and breathing art and performance in and outside of university life. Some of the people I met at Goldsmiths are now my best friends."

"The Performance Making programme was very hands-on, which meant I had to learn about physical performance, endurance, collaborative processes, leadership, lighting and stage design, video editing, and more. These skills have enabled me to execute my visions and dreams. Set in a multicultural part of London, I felt more at home that I would have in a more central and less diverse neighbourhood/environment. For the one year I spent at Goldsmiths, I was not only a student, but I was also living and breathing art and performance in and outside of university life. Some of the people I met at Goldsmiths are now my best friends. 

My journey since moving to London, and since graduating from Goldsmiths, has been wild to say the least. It was through sheer stubbornness and determination that I am where I am today. I nearly gave up so many times. I was born in New Jersey, USA, to asylum-seeking parents who fled the Lebanese Civil War. In 1993, as soon as the war ended, my mother decided to move my sister and myself to Lebanon. Her decision would alter the rest of my life. Growing up in my ancestral land, I lived a reality that I otherwise would have been too privileged to understand. Yet it felt small, homogenous, reeling with post-war trauma, and stifling. Various life circumstances - some too personal to discuss - made me angry and suffocated. I chose London on the basis that I knew it was a melting pot of cultures, languages, art forms, theatre, and music, but it was far enough from both Lebanon and New Jersey that it might allow me to find my own voice through the confusion and internalised ideas of 'displacement'.

During my time at Goldsmiths, I met many young people from all over the world. Few had a life story similar to mine, but all were on their own journey of discovery. In itself, this felt like a community: belonging nowhere else, we belonged together.

A few years after graduating, and after many odd jobs, a successful career as an actor, and a lot of talking therapy, I finally began to listen to myself. I began writing in both English and Arabic - sometimes in Lebanese dialect. I began singing both jazz and 'tarab', or whatever mishmash of the two made sense to my multicultural mind. I began to challenge ideas of who gets to be mainstream and who doesn't, of which skin colour is default and which one "has to hyphenate" as the late Toni Morrison said, of why on Earth I shouldn't write and sing and compose and perform in whatever languages and genres and traditions I grew up in. This was almost instantly a life-changing mindset. I knew I was ready to make an album. I could hear it in my mind. I no longer had any fear or doubt.

The universe often responds to bravery with abundance. And so I was awarded PRS Foundation's Women Make Music Award to fund and support the making of my first album 'SUNGOD'. I worked with my dream team of producers, musicians, and recording studios. On the 8th of March 2018, the album was launched at Rich Mix to a full house. What has happened since is a dream come true.

This year I have so far headlined Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (Royal Court Liverpool) and Shubbak Festival (National Theatre River Stage). In October, I will be performing in a double-bill show alongside AlSarah And The Nubatones, of whom I am a long-time fan. In December this year, I will be opening for Cairokee at Electric Ballroom in Camden. I am also nominated for The Arab British Centre's Award For Culture 2019 and will be attending the awards ceremony in September. I was recently in Harper's Bazaar Arabia, Emirates Woman, Bido Lito!, BBC Arabic, The National, and in October will have my first full-length feature published in MyKali, the Arab world's only queer and feminist inclusive zine.

I recently began working with a great manager who is now in the process of building my first tour for 2020.

I am often asked what inspired me to make the type of music that I make. My answer is always this: I made the music that I needed but could not find. The fact that it has touched so many people across the Arab diaspora and the world in general is an honour and a blessing."

See more and stream the album at www.julianayazbeck.com.