(United States)

Zoya Sardashti is a performance researcher, socially engaged artist, and cultural mediator. Their projects have manifested as devised theatre, dance, one-to-one performance, and performative interventions. Born to an Iranian father and American mother, she spent most of her childhood in the southern part of the United States. In school, raising a hand to declare the family name, Sardashti, evoked an invisible mark of displacement. However, participating in theatre offered community. A person’s ability to create movement and play with words held more significance than the origin of a name. These experiences opened a life-long pathway towards experimenting with various formats of performance-as-dialogue. Across the last 12 years, Zoya has engaged people in Seoul, London, Los Angeles, Glorenza, Venice, Florence, Bolzano, Milan, San Diego, and Berlin.