Zainab Magdy

Actor/theatre-maker – Cairo, Egypt
Participant International Forum 2019

Zainab Magdy was born in Giza in 1988. She has an MA in Performance and Arab American Studies from Cairo University, where she is now doing her PhD. Magdy started acting on stage in 2008; she has most recently been part of Laila Soliman's “Zig Zig” and has acted in Mahmoud Lotfy's film “Experimental Summer” (Berlinale 2017). Magdy was also part of the writing and performing project “The Odd Ducks” - a gender sensitive storytelling project. In 2013 she took part in the International Residency for Emerging Playwrights at the Royal Court Theatre in London. She was one of three writers in residence at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin in the workshop “Hilfe, das Volk kommt!”, a cooperation with Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. Her first performance piece “Ordinary People” premiered at Maxim Gorki Theater in October 2016 and was shown in Cairo in November of the same year. In 2017 she facilitated a performative workshop for reading and writing at the Contemporary Image Collective: “Geography for Beaten Heroes”.