Zoë Svendsen

Zoë is a theatre director, dramaturg and translator.

As Director of METIS (www.metisarts.co.uk), she collaborates with other artists to create interdisciplinary projects that utilise small spaces to create immersive audience experiences. These have focussed on contemporary political subjects such as capitalism and poker; climate change; the relation between the real and the virtual. Directing/writing projects include 3rd Ring Out (UK tour 2010-11 www.3rdringout.com), which received a TippingPoint Commission Award. As dramaturg she works regularly with institutions such as the Young Vic. Zoë is also Associate Artist with Company of Angels, a script reader in the literary department at the National Theatre, and an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Theatre.

Drawing on her extensive professional theatre experience, Zoë’s current practise-based performance research focuses on dramaturgy and the concepts of ‘rehearsal’ and ‘attention’. With Dr. Raphael Lyne (English) and Dr. Greg Davis (Experimental Psychology) she is currently developing a research project exploring the relationship between visual attention, subjectivity, text and spatiality in Renaissance drama, using a practice-based approach.

Zoë is currently collaborating with artist and video/set designer Simon Daw (www.simondaw.com) to create a performance installation out of an ongoing investigation of intention, attention, competition and the relationship between body and machine. The project is nominally titled The Fencing Project, due to its having an invented sport at its heart, inspired by some of the feints and form of fencing. See http://metisarts.co.uk/fencingproject/ for further information.