Zoë Svendsen

Zoë Svendsen directs the performing arts company METIS (www.metisarts.co.uk), making participatory theatre performances and installation works exploring contemporary political subjects, including the theatre show Love Letters to a Liveable Future (Cambridge Junction / Season for Change 2021); Factory of the Future, a video installation created in collaboration with architects, commissioned for the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019; the Artsadmin Green Commission, WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE (Barbican Centre 2018), a performance installation imagining alternative economic conditions for addressing climate crisis; World Factory, exploring consumer capitalism through the lens of the global textile industry (Young Vic and UK tour; shortlisted for the Berlin Theatertreffen Stückemarkt 2016); 3rd Ring Out, an emergency-planning-style ‘rehearsal’ for climate change (TippingPoint Commission Award; UK tour).

As dramaturg Zoë collaborates creatively on innovative productions of classic texts, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure and The Changeling (Young Vic); Miss Julie (Aarhus Theatre, Denmark); Macbeth and Arden of Faversham (Royal Shakespeare Company); Edward II (National Theatre). Her work has been developed through several artist residencies, including at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (2014-15); the Future Scenarios ‘networked residency’ (Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Open University, and Sheffield University, 2016-17); and at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (2018-19).

Zoë lectures on drama and performance in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, and is currently writing Theatre & Dramaturgy for the Palgrave Macmillan book series, Theatre &, for which she has been running workshops on dramaturgy for directors at the Young Vic, and writers at the Royal Court.

Instagram @metisprojectsUK
Twitter @metisprojects