roza sarkisian

Roza Sarkisian is a Theatre director and Curator. She graduated from the Theatre Directing Department at the I. P. Kotlyarevski National University of Arts in Kharkiv (2012) and from the Political Sociology Department at the V. N. Karazin National University in Kharkiv (2009). In the years of 2017 -2019 Roza worked as the Head Theatre Director of the First Ukrainian Academic Theatre for Children and Youth in Lviv. In the years of 2017 -2019 she worked as the Theatre Director on the House in Ivano-Frankivsk National Academic Drama and Music Theatre.
In her Kharkiv artistic period she was the founder and artistic director of the independent De Facto Theatre (2012-2017), where she directed the play Ja, mein Führer by Brigitte Schweiger, performance VO(Y)NA, post-documentary play Museum of Peace. Museum of War, To Kill Woman and others productions.

Among her recent most applauded works are: Yes, my Fuhrer (Theatre DeFacto, 2014), the My Granddad was digging. My Dad was digging. But I Won't Do It (Ukrainian-Polish co-production, co-director: Agnieszka Błońska, 2016); Theory of the Big Filter (Theatre of the Contemporary Dialog, Poltava, 2017); Psychosis (Theatre Actor in Kyiv, 2018); Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful Times (the First Theatre in Lviv, 2018); and Macbeth (Academic Lesia Ukrainka Drama Theatre in Lviv, 2019), H-effect based on Hamlet by Shakeaspeare and Hamletmaschine by Heiner Muller (Ukraine-Polish-German co-production, NGO “Art-Dialogue”, 2020), Radio Mariia by Joanna Wichowska and Krysia Bednarek (Theatre Powszechny in Warsaw, 2022)

Her productions, dealing with the topics of collective memory, national identity, political manipulation, non-normativity and social oppression have won several awards and invitations to many festivals in Ukraine (including Gogol Fest in Kyiv , 2014 and 2016; Urban Exploration Lviv Fest 2014; GaliciaKult in Kharkiv, 2016; Terra Futura in Kherson, 2016; Startup Gogol Fest in Mariupol 2017; the Golden Lion in Lviv, 2018; Parade Fest in Kharkiv, 2018 and 2019; Svitohliad in Severodonieck, 2019) and in Poland: Desant.UA Festival in Warsaw, 2017; Close Strangers Festival in Poznań, 2019.

Roza is a winner of the British Council Ukraine competition "Taking the Stage 2017", as well as the Gaude Polonia scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland in 2017, International Mobility Grant “Culture Bridges” and the Artistic Scholarship from the President of Ukraine in 2019/2020. She also won a "City of Lviv Personality of the Year 2018” award in the category of Theatre.

She has been an initiator, curator and director of numerous art and education projects for teenagers, such as festivals “Drama Teen Lab” and “Young Directors for Children”, realized at the First Theatre in Lviv, or "Voices of Neighborhood". She also has led numerous workshops for teenagers and created the performances with young non-proffesional actors and people with a disability.