The Nordic First St. John's Lodge Jubilee Foundation was established in 1867 with the purpose of supporting promising young people in their education in science, arts or crafts.
This year, the scholarship has been awarded to Monirah Hashemi, Maryam Hashempour and Zsófia Rebeka Kozma. All three are students in our artistic master's program in performing arts as critical practice. Warm congratulations!
Here you can read more about our master program
Motivations*
Monirah Hashemi is an actor, director and playwright originally from Afghanistan. There she has dedicated herself to creating spaces where Afghan women and youth can use theater, storytelling, film and music as forms of expression in an oppressive society. She has founded an artistic platform where young people can use film and theater as tools to address relevant social issues and facilitate constructive dialogues. In addition, she has created the conditions for several plays led exclusively by women and has played a key role in the establishment of the festival “A Night with Buddha”, in memory of the Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.
Maryam Hashempour is an Iranian theater maker and playwright based in Malmö. Her artistic career has been largely shaped by her work in Iran's independent and experimental art scenes. Her focus on the politics of citizenship and the performativity of everyday life during times of uprising and resistance has already led Maryam to create a large number of outstanding site-specific theater projects.
Maryam Hashempour's work is engaging, humorous and politically astute. With her strong artistic individuality and integration of modern technology in her work, she is a promising talent who will be a great asset to the contemporary Swedish and European theater field in the coming years and decades.
Zsófia Rebeka Kozma is a Budapest-based theater maker with a background in social sciences and acting. She makes performance art based on audience presence, using elements of performance art, autobiographical material and movement. She studied at City College of New York and the Freeszfe Society in Budapest and co-founded the National Performance Art Theater Collective.
Her performances have a playful quality, while getting 'under the skin' of the audience and aiming to provoke reflection on the social and political structures in which they live. As a performer, Zsófia has a physical approach and great comic timing.
*Translations courtesy of article author
Read more about the Jubilee Fund and all of this year's grantees here