NORA AMIN
Nora Amin has a distinguished background in writing, literature, movement, performance and directing. As a creator and performer, she has been trained by international theatre masters including Augusto Boal, the master and theoretician of the "Theatre of the Oppressed." A graduate of Cairo University in 1992 with a degree in French and Comparative Literatures, Amin started her career as a founding member of the Modern Dance Company of the Cairo Opera House, who then went on to become a very well-known Egyptian writer. She has published two novels and four collections of short stories. An Empty Pink Shirt (2000) was chosen as the best novel for an Egyptian writer under 40 years old, and Convex Roads (1996) was chosen as best short story in Egypt, while A Long Black Shirt (1996) won the award for best short story in the Arab world.  

Amin has done work in mental hospitals, a prison for men, and a rehabilitation institution/prison for teenagers. Her work now focuses mainly on issue-based storytelling and performance. This work includes performance that uses physical theatre techniques to tell personal histories and stories, and also projects devoted to intercultural dialogue told through live performance and mixed media. In addition to her teaching position at the Academy of Arts in Cairo, Amin has conducted many theatre workshops around the world through her theatre company, "Lamusica Independent Theatre Group," which she founded in 2000.   She has also directed numerous productions, half of them international collaborations, Her most recent project was directing a group of Mount Holyoke students in a project that told the stories of a group of women in an Egyptian prison.

Nora Amin's solo performance ARAB, about her identity as an Arab/Muslim/woman will be one of the productions featured this summer at the Ko Festival of Performance and she will be teaching a six-day workshop on "STORYTELLING."