Sara Shaarawi

Sara Shaarawi is a playwright from Cairo, based in Glasgow. She’s worked with several theatre companies around the UK: the National Theatre of Scotland, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Shubbak festival, Fuel Theatre, Edinburgh International festival, Imaginate Children’s festival, Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Scottish Refugee Council, and Paines Plough. Her work has also been performed internationally in South Africa, Uganda, Egypt and Germany. She has written for performance in several contexts, including scripts for audio, making work with/for children and young people, and non-traditional performance.

She also has extensive experience in running workshops for both adults and young people, both one-offs and longer form. She is a regular facilitator for the Traverse Theatre’s Class Act, a seven-week programme supporting young people in writing their own short plays. She also ran a Muslim Women’s writing group with Stellar Quines for three years, at the Glasgow Women’s Library. In 2023, she became an associate playwright with Playwrights’ Studio Scotland where she delivered workshops and talks, ran a couple of writers’ groups and mentored a playwright on the mentoring programme. She often works in contexts that support the creativity of various groups such as young people, women and nonbinary people, and people with migrant background and/or experiences of displacement.

Her writing credits include: Niqabi Ninja (Independent Arts Projects/Hewar Theater), Sister Radio (Stellar Quines/Pitlochry Festival Theatre/Pearl Fisher), The Day the Stampers United (Wonder Fools); and PAL: Your AI Care Companion (Citizens Theatre Young Co.).