WSD SHARJAH 2025 - advisory board
Professor Peter Barlow FRSA
Chair
Professor Peter Barlow FRSA is the Executive Director of Sharjah Performing Arts Academy (SPAA). With over 30 years of experience teaching and training actors, performers, and theatre technicians, he has significantly influenced the performing arts education landscape. A graduate of Rose Bruford College, he has held notable positions, including Director and Chief Executive of Guildford School of Acting and Vice Principal of Laine Theatre Arts. As a professional judge for the Olivier Awards in 2011 and 2013 and a visiting professor at various international institutions, Professor Barlow's career is distinguished by his commitment to excellence in drama education and training.
DR KHALIFAH AL HAJRI
Khalifah Alhajri, who holds a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in Scenography. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Scenography and Fine Art with over 23 years of teaching experience in stage design. Alhajri graduated from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Kuwait and the University of Leeds, UK. Currently, he works at The Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in the Stage Design Department in Kuwait.
Additionally, Khalifah Alhajri is actively involved in various professional roles within the field of performing arts. He serves as an Executive Board Member at Loyac Academy of Performing Arts (LAPA) in Kuwait. Furthermore, he participates as a jury member in many international theatre festivals, showcasing his expertise and contributing to the evaluation of theatrical performances. Alhajri is also a member of The International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects, and Technicians (OISTAT).
LINA YOUNES
Lina Younes is a Palestinian Lebanese visual designer in theater, film, animation, and installations, and is based between Dubai, UAE, and NYC, USA. She is on a constant quest for story-centered collaborations, which explore narratives while showcasing processes. She creates worlds with one eye shut and an index finger as her wand. While studying for her MFA in Design in Theater and Film from NYU/Tisch, she enjoyed controlling traffic, mapping the skies, imagining the birds and inhabitants of the world in plays, dances, operas, and films. She has explored puppetry and stop-motion animation in the Gulf, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Her work is about freezing moments, replaying them, changing scenarios, playing out consequences, and then repeating. Impossible things happen in an instant; objects vanish, come to life, and are set off again. In motion.
She is an imagineer with a great love and a great weakness: soap bubbles.
ARIS PRETELIN-ESTÉVES
BA Scenography, MA Stage Direction (National School of Theatrical Art-National Institute of Fine Arts).
Professor of the Scenic Design and Production area at the BA in Dramatic Literature and Theater, UNAM since 2010.
My artistic work explores the ecoscenographic intervention in alternative spaces. I produce, direct and design territorial projects, where scenography is conceived as an environment, assembly and encounter-space. My works have been exhibited in World Stage Design 2017, World Stage Design 2022, Prague Quadrennial 2015, 2019, 2023. Winner of the Community Cultural Collectives Grant Program of the CDMX Secretary of Culture 2018 and 2021.
In 2018, I began my training in the field of Bioethics-Ecoethics at the National University Program of Bioethics- PUB-UNAM also in the University I took part in a interdisciplinary research program of social interventions with mexican communities affected by COVID from 2020-2024.
Within my academic work and dissemination of culture, I 've presented my ecoscenographic research work in colloquia and round tables in Mexican universities, PQ2019, PQ2023, WSD 2022, Ecuador Ministry of Culture 2022 and Theater Institute Barcelona, 2019.
Actually I work in the Diversity and Equality Program at the National Institute of Fine Arts MX where I design academic projects for artistic groups.
AMIN BOUDRIKA
Amin Boudrika is a Moroccan scenographer and director. After a degree in scenography at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Art and Cultural Animation in Rabat-Morocco, he obtained a Master in scenography at the National School of Architecture in Nantes-France.His desire to expand his knowledge does not stop there and extends to research with a PHD in general and comparative literature that he obtained at the University of Rouen in 2018. Alongside his academic career, Amin devotes himself to creation mainly as a director and scenographer, sometimes as a leader and sometimes as a collaborator on national and international projects.
He is also the curator and the designer of the Moroccan stand in the PQ (2019/2023).
In 2023 he received two prizes:
- The best performance of the year in the African festival in Rabat / Morocco. the performance "Elle était une fois, LA JUPE.
-The Silver Tanit of the Carthage theatrical days in Tunis/ Tunisia. The performance "Chams"
MARINA MALENI
Theatre and Communication specialist, PQ Golden Triga award 2023 receiver for Cyprus as Curator
Born in Nicosia, Cyprus. Holds degrees in Theatre Studies, Acting and Sociology(Hons) from the University of Texas at Austin and Communication and Journalism from the Open University Cyprus. Has worked successfully in the past as an actress, TV host and radio music producer for several years. Since 2001 she works as Theatre Development Officer for Cyprus Theatre Organisation, in charge of State theatre subsidies and policy forming until 2022, European collaborations, playwriting development, non-professional theatre, theatre education programs, Festivals, and has been PQ National Participation Curator since 2007, bringing home in 2023 the prestigious Golden Triga award in collaboration with Melita Couta.
Among other things she is Honorary member of the Board of CYCSTAT, Honorary member of the Board of the Cyprus Center of Theatre for children and youth – Assitej Cyprus, member of the advisory body of the Cyprus Youth Board, Board member of the Cyprus Theatre Museum, and the newly elected member of the Board of Directors of the European Theatre Convention (ETC). Marina has designed and coordinated several very successful European culture program collaborations for Cyprus.
JOAQUIM JOSE ARANDA
One of the leading lighting designer’s, technical director’s and technical theatre consultant’s in the Philippines today, Jay has done an extensive range of performances internationally, covering theatre, opera, dance, musicals, conventions, corporate events, product launches, fashion shows and music concerts. He is presently the principal designer of JJZA Media Production Services, a lighting, sound, multi-media systems design and integration, theatre operations and technical theatre management consultancy. Jay is a senior faculty member of the DLS-CSB School of Design and Arts Theater Arts Program, teaching in the Production Design and Dance programs, and was previously the Director of the DLS-CSB Center for Theater Operations. A member of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), he has also served as the Secretary of the Philippine Association of Theatre Designers and Technicians (PATDAT/ OISTAT Centre Philippines) since 1998, as well as a member of its Technology Commission. Jay is a founding member of the Technical Theatre Network Asia (TTNA). He is currently a Vice Chair of the Technology Commission, International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians (OISTAT). He was previously the Chair of the Technical Invention Prize 2022 (TIP). Jay’s lighting work was exhibited at the Gallery Exhibition, Lighting Design Category, and Inaugural Edition of the World Stage Design 2005 in Toronto, Canada, and published in the book World Scenography, Volume 2: 1990 – 2005. His work has been nominated for Outstanding Lighting Design in PHILSTAGES’ Gawad Buhay Awards in 2011 (BP’s Sleeping Beauty), 2013 (TP’s San Andres B.), 2016 (Ballet Manila’s Rebel), as well as BROADWAY WORLD Philippines’ Awards in 2012 for Best Lighting Design (Musical/ Play) of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. He is a featured artist in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, 2nd Edition, Theater Volume 9 and its online version. His latest work pre-pandemic was lighting Ballet Philippines’ restaging of Carlo Pacis’ full-length ballet of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. He was part of World Theatre Production’s 2022 staging of Miss Saigon in Guam. Jay is currently part of the theatre consultants of Rockwell Land’s “Proscenium”.