Laila Soliman

Biography

Laila Soliman works as a playwright, director and dramaturge. She studied theatre and Arabic literature at the American University in Cairo until 2004, then completed a post-graduate degree at the theatre school DasArts in Amsterdam. Following this she staged “Retreating World” by Naomi Wallace and in 2006 “Ghorba, Images of Alienation”, a play developed with the group Cairo Camps, which she co-founded. As a dramaturge she has worked on the Rimini Protokoll (Stefan Kaegi) production “Radio Muezzin”, which she also accompanied on its tour. In 2011 Laila Soliman took part in the demonstrations at Tahrir Square during the revolution in Egypt and was also otherwise politically engaged in the city. In her plays “Lessons in Revolting” and “Not Time for Art”, she thematised this revolution on the stage. She was represented at Zurich’s Theater Spektakel in 2011 with the piece “Lessons in Revolting”, which she developed together with Ruud Gielens. For Theater Neumarkt the director, again working with Ruud Gielens, developed a version of “Der Fall Meursault”. Her works have been shown in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and a number of European countries.