Sarah Sakaan, Associate Artistic Director, is a New York City based Syrian-American theater maker, actress and writer. As Playwright in Residence at LPAC(LaGuardia Performing Arts Center) 2014-2015 she has written the new play The Art of Hijab, Kohl Black and the Right Way to Pray, which is slated for a workshop production March 2016 at LPAC. Sakaan’s writing is influenced by her upbringing in Memphis,TN, in a Muslim and Unitarian Universalist household. She is interested in themes of social justice, social-cultural rituals and traditions, current events as well as assimilation verses cultural preservation. Sakaan has lived and worked in NYC since 2005, upon graduating from Emerson College in Boston with a B.F.A. in Acting. Most of her theater career has been in the development of new plays and collaboratively developed works in downtown and independent theater of NYC and Brooklyn. Sakaan has worked with Jim Simpson and Carol Ostrow at the Flea Theater on numerous productions with playwrights such as A.R. Gurney and Thomas Bradshaw. Sakaan has collaborated with the theater company Polybe+Seats since 2006 devising new works, reviving classic plays, performing and writing for site specific productions. With Polybe + Seats she has joyfully performed in Granada, A Thousand, Thousand Slimy Things, Alice or The Scottish Gravediggers, A History of Launching Ships, and Anna Asli Suriyah(I Come from Syria). For P+S she has also developed, directed, produced and performed in Dreamscape for the Figment Arts Festival and Project Syria, a solo performance from In the Atrium: Polybe + Seats in Progress at Brooklyn Winery. Project Syria was the Work in Progress showing of three monologues that were eventually expanded to create the play Anna Asli Suriyah (I Come from Syria). NYC acting credits include Gulnare in The Corsair, directed by Katie Naka, Columbia MFA Directing Thesis and Mae in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof directed by Katie Naka Columbia MFA Directing Thesis, Doctor Faustus with Queens Players, Jose Rivera’s Sonnets for an Old Century with Impulse Initiative, King Lear as Earl of Kent with Balloon Heaven Productions and Sybil Kempson’s KurbisGeistNacht at Dixon Place. Sarah has also worked with Libby Emmons and Dave Marcus of BlueBox Productions on a number of Stickies, as well as Connie in Detroit, The Flea Theater’s Post Mortem, Offending the Audience and Dawn. Film credits include “Oh Boy!”, Shot at Sundown and Project NIM. Sakaan is a writer with a strong theater and acting background who is interested in the process of collaboration and developing new works that are challenging and entertaining for theater makers and audience members alike.