Theater director Kholoud Sawaf bridges worlds through her innovative approach to storytelling. In this intimate conversation, the Damascus-born artist discusses how her multicultural background shapes her creative vision, from her groundbreaking work 10,000 Balconies to her exploration of culturally-specific physicality in performance. Sawaf reveals her philosophy of creating theater that balances cultural specificity with universal human experiences, challenging conventional theatrical conventions by elevating elements beyond language alone.

Shivani Somaiya: I'm curious to know when you knew theater was your discipline or creative practice? How did you know that was your storytelling output?

Kholoud Sawaf: I don't know if it was just one moment. I grew up in a family that's very much interested in the arts. My parents are journalists, so we got to travel. My dad's mom is Lebanese, so we traveled to Lebanon often and attended a lot of artistic work that is famous across the region such as the Rahbani Brothers and Fairuz, and the Caracalla Dance Group and Theater Group. I remember attending a play and feeling really scared by the loud noises, big gestures, and the darkness inside the theatre. But, by the end of the play, I had ditched my parents and found a way to get up close to the stage because I was so fascinated by everything. 

So when my mom asked me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I responded by letting her know, "I want to be the one moving them." It was interesting that even then I realized I don’t want to be on stage, and that there is somebody in the background “moving the actors on stage.” Then years later, when I was doing my undergraduate degree at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, there was a theatre professor from the US who was offering theater classes. After taking his classes I got interested in being an assistant director. I felt like there was something really magical in that process. I remember going into the theater before a show opened and it just felt so charged. There was something about a story about being born that felt so magical and I just felt like there was something more for me in that space. It didn’t feel scary this time, but it felt sacred and intimate in a way that's hard to articulate.

Shivani: Do you also approach your creativity and your creative discipline through a lens of spirituality at all? Or is it more regimented for you?

Kholoud: I don’t know if it’s spirituality, as much as a theatrical aesthetics. There is something about creating a space with a community that interests me. The collaborative process is something that makes me lean forward and I become a child in the process where I have a lot of childlike energy. This playfulness is what makes me so passionate about the work. When I’m operating in this space of playfulness and experimentation, I always feel like my heart is ahead of everything else in my body — my heart is leading and everything else is following. It's a comforting feeling, especially as an overthinker. I’m always reassuring myself that it’s okay: the overthinking can come later, let the heart create now. Which is why I'm also inspired by the Samuel Beckett quote: “Dance first, think later.”

Shivani: You spoke about your connection to Lebanon, going to school in the UAE, and also your upbringing in Syria. These countries and cultures are all so different to one another, and also vastly different to the United States. How has your international experience shaped your approach to storytelling? Did that come much later for you in your practice or have you always approached your creative projects from an international perspective?

Kholoud: It has always lived in me. The international perspective for me comes through mostly in the aesthetics of the work. I'm inspired very much by a journey that follows an emotional path, even if it doesn't follow a rigid plot in the Western definition or standards.  

In the Western perspective, at least in my experience with it, there is a little bit of a hierarchical structure behind theatrical work and production. It often starts with language as the path or access point to storytelling, then the director's vision, then design and production elements. I like to flip the pyramid on its side and ask, what if language is just one of the bars? And that opens up a portal to ask how we can actually play with it. In that, language can have a voice when it needs to, light can have a voice, movement, costumes, music, sound, stillness. With that, all of these theatrical elements feel almost like sound knobs that you're playing with. That approach for me allows for an opportunity for layering that sometimes I miss in the Western approach when language is the prominent access point to storytelling.

For example, with 10,000 Balconies I wanted to create a scene that showcased the inflation that happened as well as how the conversations in Syria changed after the uprising in 2011. So, I created a scene whereby people were passing money to pay for their bus rides and having everyday, regular conversations on the bus. Then I repeated that same scene after the uprising to show how conversations and attitudes had changed, as well as how bus fare increased tenfold or more.

It was a way for me to show instead of tell. I preferred to do that over writing a moving monologue about how the price of the tomato has spiked, because this approach allowed for theatricality and playfulness as well as layering by adding music, rhythm, and movement.

Shivani: Your work focuses on investigating cultural depth, authenticity, and representation. Can you share a specific moment or challenge from a recent production that exemplifies this investigation? And what did you learn from it?

Kholoud: I come back to the idea of trying to have one foot in cultural specificity and one foot in universality, anytime I work with different cultures. For example, most recently I had a collaboration with the Marshallese​​ community in Northwest Arkansas, which is a community that was displaced from the Marshall Islands, because of the nuclear testing on their islands. I focused on being present with the idea of how this very Marshallese story can become universal. For example, the narrative in the film, We Are Here, is very particular to the Marshallese story and reflects a personal journey with the nuclear testing, but it was also about Native communities losing their land and the fear for their identity, which all Native communities threatened to lose their land can relate to. It was also a film that followed a personal approach and had a mother and a daughter and the dynamic that comes with that, which immediately makes it universal and relatable. 

Dancing between that universality and authenticity is a line I'm interested in weaving into all the work I'm creating or all the stories I'm telling. When I'm working with different cultures, it almost feels like you're translating or curating the storytelling or the culture to the audience. This is what I said when I was creating 10,000 Balconies from the get-go in the pre-production with the designers: "I'm interested in creating a design where I can tell the story with the audience and not to or for them.”

As for a learning curve, I recall while creating 10,000 Balconies, how my culture is often put in the position of being portrayed as either an enemy or a victim. You're immediately put as an artist in a place where you either have to defend yourself from being portrayed as an enemy or convince others that you don’t need saving. Both of these portrayals come from a place of othering that I’m not interested in. So throughout the production process for 10,000 Balconies, I was constantly interested in ideas of how I could tell the story with my audience as opposed to having to do it for them. Which is why, whether I was conscious of it or not, the decision to make 10,000 Balconies for myself as an audience freed me, it made me create a story that is unapologetically very Syrian, which made it very specific while also focusing on the universal human story. 

Shivani: Theater traditions across many Middle Eastern countries are often through very strong communities. Storytelling in general is a very rich tradition in the Middle East. How do these traditions influence your directorial work, but specifically when creating in American theatrical spaces?

Kholoud: I can’t speak for “Middle Eastern” cultures, as you know, that’s a very large region with different languages and different practices. I can only speak for my perspective as a Syrian artist. For me, it’s about the aesthetics that make me interested in visual and movement-based storytelling. It's that desire to flip that pyramid on its side and ask how can I invite other collaborators early on? What can I do to allow for creation without knowing? I always say that we're often put in a place where we're having to microwave art, not create art, and I try to push against that microwaving process as much as I can given the resources.

Shivani: How does this translate into a tangible perspective? Speaking both to your process and to your vision: how do you cultivate these qualities from a tangible perspective to create inclusive creative spaces? 

Kholoud: Honestly, food.

I was trying to give an intellectual and smart answer and then I was like, you know what? The simple answer is that I bring food into the creative space. Just doing that very quickly breaks the ice. Immediately there's connections, there's sparks, and there is community. I try to include food and smell; I try to be evocative with the senses in a way that allows for relationships between the people and the space. In a way it fosters a sense of belonging and family.  And I often name that that’s what I’m doing straightforward to collaborators, and they also start participating in that culture. I would also add that being selective about who is in the room will go a long way. I try to invite people that can be part of that family-like energy or people who have the “yes, and…” energy.

Shivani: From your theater direction to documentary filmmaking with We Are Here, you work across multiple mediums. What draws you to a particular medium? And how, if at all, does your theatrical background influence your approach to film?

Kholoud: I've worked on documentaries a little bit in the United Arab Emirates as well as in Syria. And again when I partnered with the Marshallese community, most recently. I felt as though theater was not the right medium for what was needed because I couldn’t write a play about their experience, obviously. As you know, theater is a creative take on reality, not a capture of reality. Given that I was the creative lead artist on the project and that I am not Marshallese, I felt that documentary as an art form had a better chance for me to stay out of the way and center their perspective without much interference from my end. 

Shivani: As someone who creates work that reflects the society we live in but also builds a future society that we want to inhabit, what changes have you observed in how theaters and also filmmakers or filmmaking cultures approach representation and inclusion since you began your career? How do you hope it continues to change in the future for future theater producers and directors like yourself? Or how do you wish your practice and discipline can evolve in the future?

Kholoud: The last year and a half have taught me a lot, both on a political perspective and on a personal perspective in my own life. I am learning my relationship to truth and reevaluating how I can be present with that truth privately and publicly in the same way, and in a way that can be heard. I have also been asking some questions and reflecting on art spaces and our relationship to truth and advocacy — what is allowed and what is not allowed. I find myself asking: Are we being safely brave or bravely safe?

It makes me feel that truth and advocacy have taken a commercial turn, or maybe it has been like that from the get go? I don’t know, but in all cases, if we can’t speak the full truth it means we are exploiting not advocating. All of this makes me want to check out of the conversation and be in the shadows until I have the energy, language, circumstances, and bravery to personally and politically speak and live the truth in a way that feels genuine and honest. I’m very much in the shadows now, and very much in a reflecting space, which is why my answer is raw.