Biography
Kholoud Sawaf is a Syrian theatre director, filmmaker, producer, and community-based artist born and raised in Damascus. Her work brings together movement, music, and visual storytelling to create audience-centered experiences that explore belonging, memory, and human connection. She has worked and trained in theatre and television in Syria, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and the United States.
Her directing credits include Every Brilliant Thing (Hippodrome Theatre), The Suburbs (Thrown Stone), Much Ado About Nothing (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s touring program for young audiences), and Vietgone and 10,000 Balconies (TheatreSquared). She conceived, wrote, and directed 10,000 Balconies, a response to Romeo and Juliet set in Damascus, supported by a $250,000 Building Bridges grant from the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. Upcoming work includes directing 1984 at the University of Arkansas in spring 2027.
Her work also includes Theatre for One: Nairobi Edition with Octopus Theatricals and Navigating, a multiyear collaboration with the Marshallese community in Arkansas that produced the films Canoe of One Community and We Are Here. She is currently developing an approach to physical storytelling that explores how gesture, movement, and ensemble connection can carry stories beyond language.
Sawaf is a 2024 United States Artists Fellow and a recipient of the Interchange Artists Award (2024), the Creative Impact Award (2022), and the Drama League’s Classical Directing Fellowship (2017). She collaborated with Tina Packer on Cymbeline at Shakespeare & Company and assisted director May Adrales on Vietgone at Manhattan Theatre Club, as a Jonathan Alper Directing Fellow, and at Oregon Shakespeare Festival through its FAIR Program.
She holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Arkansas and a BA in Mass Communication from the American University of Sharjah.