Zoë Svendsen is a director, translator and researcher who has worked internationally on a range of intercultural performance and installation projects with artists from Italy, Peru, Somalia, Pakistan and Berlin (where she lived from 2000-2002). She participated in the Berlin Theatertreffen International Forum this May, working with Armin Petras and Andreas Koschwitz from the Maxim Gorki Theater. Zoë’s association with Berlin began in 1997 with a residency at Theater o.N./Zinnober. Zoë’s most recent international project was the Enparts workshop Il Corpo Elettrico, working with other artists from around Europe to create an interdisciplinary performance, incorporating dance, video, CGI, motion-capture technology and sound, for the Contemporary Music Festival of the 2009 Venice Biennale.

As director, she collaborated with composer and musician David Paul Jones to create a stage version of Brecht’s short story, Four Men & a Poker Game (in association with Northern Stage, November 2008, developed with Grid Iron, Cove Park and the National Theatre Studio). In 2008 Zoë also assisted Belgian director Luk Perceval (Schaubühne/Thalia Theater) for a workshop with actors at the RSC; translated Ödön von Horváth’s Don Juan Comes Back from the War for a residency at the National Theatre Studio, and completed the NT studio director’s course. She recently translated Felicia Zeller’s latest play, Kaspar Häuser Meer, for the National Theatre Studio, and assistant-directed a new musical version of the film It’s a Wonderful Life for the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich.

Zoe has just been made the inaugural Research Fellow in Drama and Performance at the English Faculty of the University of Cambridge, where she will be working to develop practice-based performance research projects. Zoë recently completed a PhD thesis on the relationship between the conditions of practice and aesthetics in theatre, exploring space and translation at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, London.