NAJMEH SHOARA
COLLABORATOR - THE WOMAN WHO CROSSED THE ROAD
ACTOR. PERFORMER. DIRECTOR.
She worked with Storm in the North on ‘The Woman Who crossed the Road’ which toured studio spaces in the UK in 2023.
In Iran, she studied as an actor in Tehran. She worked in multi-media, mixed art, text -based, physical theatre and contemporary dance.
Najmeh left Iran because… well, it’s a long list of difficult things.
The fact is… when you grow up and realise the country with its name on your passport, the place where your Baba and Maman told you stories about happiness, opportunity and fairness, doesn’t actually care about those things, then you just have to go to the airport and go to any other place that you can get in. You have to leave behind the cruelty and the rules made by men to control women. But you also have to say goodbye forever to the people and the places you love. And that bit hurts.
Najmeh became a person with no state, and spent years in a new country that only offered her the lowest rates of pay (if any at all) and enjoyed her vulnerability as a woman. She became a person with no place in the world to call home.
The piece she made with Storm in the North was about all those things.
She is interested in protest theatre as a genre to find ways to speak back to the world.
She now lives and works in Australia.