Alia Alzougbi is the artistic director of Shubbak Festival. Born in Lebanon, she is a cultural strategist, artist and facilitator working at the intersection of art and social and environmental justice. She has worked with national and international organisations as an artist and storyteller to create critical encounters in education and the arts towards collective liberation, from local corner shops to world-renowned museums.

Prior to joining Shubbak, she was Director of the global citizenship education organisation Global Learning London. She is Chair of Maslaha, an organisation which seeks to change and challenge the conditions that create inequalities for Muslim communities in areas such as education, gender, criminal justice, health, negative media coverage and a continued climate of Islamophobia. She is also a trustee at Tamasha, a dedicated home for both emerging and established Global Majority artists. 

Pamela Nomvete is a South African performer born in Ethiopia. She graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 1985 and spent 10 years on the British stage before moving to South Africa in 1994, where she embarked on a very successful television career. She returned to the UK in 2007 and has performed with the RSC (Twelfth Night), the NT (Coriolanus, The Comedy of Errors, Fuente Ovejuna, The David Hare Trilogy, Racing Demon, Welcome to Thebes), Almeida (The Doctor), Young Vic (The Convert) and many others. Her extensive TV credits include: Andor, Nightsleeper, Gangs of London, In the Long Run, Flesh and Blood, Noughts and Crosses, Wild Bill, The Widow, Lockdown and Coronation Street.

 Miriam Buether  is a multi-award winning stage designer, working internationally in theatre, opera and dance. Born in Weimar and raised in East Berlin, she received the 2025 Tony Award for Best Scenic Design Stranger Things: The First Shadow, as well as a 2023 Olivier Award and the Critics' Circle Award for the same production. She is also three times Tony Award nominated for Prima Facie, Three Tall Women, To Kill a Mockingbird, three times winner of the Evening Standard Award for The Jungle and Earthquakes in London and Sucker Punch, and winner of the Critics' Circle Award for Wild Swans.

Other work includes: Kyoto (RSC); Patriots (Almeida/WestEnd/Broadway); King Lear; A Doll’s House, Part 2; The Children (Broadway); The 47th (Old Vic); Women Beware the Devil; Shipwreck; Spring Awakening; Machinal; Albion; Boy, When the Rain Stops Falling; Judgement Day (Almeida); Public Enemy;The Government Inspector; In the Red and Brown Water; The Good Soul of Szechuan; The Trial; Wild Swans (Young Vic).

Tonderai Munyevu is an actor, writer and director for stage, screen and radio originally from Zimbabwe. Amongst his many critically acclaimed performances as an actor are Two Gentlemen Of Verona or Vakomana vaviri veZimbabwe (Two Gents/ Shakespeare’s Globe), Sizwe Banzi Is Dead at the Young Vic (and tour) and Black Men Walking at the Royal Court (and tour) and his role as Peter in the film Something Nice From London (Latimer Films). Writing includes Mansfield Park  (The Watermill); Mugabe, My Dad and Me (Brixton House, York Theatre Royal/ETT, Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards 2022, shortlisted for The Alfred Fagon Award 2019) and The Moors (Tara Arts Theatre/ Two Gents Productions). He is the co-artistic director of Two Gents Productions, an Associate Artist at Tiata Fahodzi and is currently under commission to the RSC and Bolton Octagon. 

Carolina Valdés is a performer, writer and theatre maker. She trained at the Col.legi de Teatre in Barcelona and at the École Internationale de Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She became Co-Artistic Director of ‘theatre O’ in 1999 and has co-created and performed in all of the company’s shows. Aside from theatre O, she has worked extensively as an actor and Movement Director and done work in theatre, opera, film and television. Her longstanding collaborations include her work with Phyllida Lloyd in the Shakespeare Trilogy project, film maker Daria Martin, writer and theatre maker Jonathan Young, and composer Melanie Wilson. Carolina has also an ongoing involvement in education and has taught throughout the years at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and Guildford Drama School amongst others.

Olivier Award–nominated choreographer and director Hannes Langolf creates emotionally charged, genre-crossing work for stage and screen. His recent credits include How About Now (Moonwalking Bear Productions), Catherine Called Birdy (dir. Lena Dunham), co-movement direction for Dear England (National Theatre and West End), Hamlet for the RSC. He was a long-standing performer and Creative Associate of DV8 Physical Theatre, performing in three critically acclaimed verbatim stage productions - including the title role in JOHN. In 2022, he founded Moonwalking Bear Productions to create innovative performance works and support emerging talent. 

Stephanie is an actor, writer and director born and raised in Singapore. Theatre credits include Coriolanus, Our Generation, Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Nightwatchman for the National Theatre (the latter earning her a Whatsonstage nomination for Best Solo Performance) and Quiz by James Graham in Chichester and the West End.

TV credits include lead and guest roles in major dramas on ITV and BBC including, recently, Breathtaking, Joan and Until I Kill You. As a writer, her plays include Dragonflies (Pandemonium Theatre, Singapore) Sisters (Sheffield Crucible), and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Finborough, Yard Theatre and Summerhall). She is currently under commission by Sheffield Theatres, Chichester and Pangdemonium. Stephanie is EDI champion on the Board of Chichester Festival Theatre, she cofounded and chaired The Act for Change Project and is a columnist for The Stage.

Photographer: Jon Holloway

takis is a leading creative designer whose visionary work can be seen on the global stage in a diverse body of work spanning theatre, opera, ballet, circus and fashion. Born in Greece, his international career has led to his work being nominated for over twenty major awards including the Laurence Olivier Awards, International Opera Awards and What’s On Stage Awards. takis holds a PhD from Aalto University, Helsinki, where he developed the concept of the META-SUIT: an interchangeable costume where the form and design adjust in order to perform different expressions of masculinity in everyday life.

takis is currently working with English National Opera, Finnish National Opera, Opera Gothenburg, South and West Australian Opera alongside the brand-new Moulin Rouge across Scandinavian capitals.

Lucinka Eisler is a theatre maker, actor and director born in the Czech Republic, with a background in collaborative, devised and text-based work. She is co-artistic director of Inspector Sands theatre company, and trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq theatre school in Paris before working as an assistant director with Theatre O and for Rufus Norris (Young Vic; National Theatre). She formed Stamping Ground Theatre in 2004, making small-scale devised work for UK touring, before co-founding Inspector Sands. The company has toured extensively in the UK and internationally, performed at the National Theatre and had projects commissioned by Lyric Hammersmith, BAC, Almeida and Southbank Centre and won several awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. 

Outside of the company she works as a freelance performer and director, most recently for Bristol Old Vic Ferment and for Simon McBurney at Dutch National Opera and ENO.

Marcelo dos Santos is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who grew up in Sydney, Rio and London. He won a Scotsman Fringe First for Innovation and Outstanding New Writing (2022) and was selected for The Stage 100 – Rising Stars category (2024). He recently won the Critics Circle Theatre Award – ‘Most Promising Playwright’ for Backstairs Billy (2024) and was nominated for The Stage Best Creative West End Debut Award (2024).

Other key credits include: Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen (Francesca Moody Productions, Roundabout August 2022 & Bush Theatre, London, Autumn/Winter 2023 – Scotsman Fringe First Award for New Writing); Subverts (Royal Court Theatre – Living Newspaper) and Lionboy (adaptation for Complicite, UK/World tour). He has been a writer-on-attachment at the National Theatre, Bush Theatre, HighTide Festival Theatre and Royal Court Theatre.