Sofia Zaragoza
Storyteller │ Artist │ Activist
Sofia Zaragoza Directing Reel
Amal y Suenos
Imagine Brave Spaces
The Walk Productions
5th November 2023
Chicano Park
Co-Directed by Catherine Hanna-Schrock and Sofia Zaragoza.
Little Amal, the beloved 12-foot puppet has been walking across the country to raise awareness about the global refugee crisis and now she’s coming to San Diego! Learn more about her story at www.walkwithamal.org.
Join us for a special free event—Amal & Sueños, ”Hopes” in Arabic and “Dreams” in Spanish—led by artists and organizations who identify with Amal’s story of displacement. Developed by Imagine in partnership with the Chicano Park Steering Committee, Common Ground Voices/La Frontera, Majdal Center, and Monarch School, this immersive, multicultural performance event will bring Amal through a dream world—manifesting her hopes and dreams, as well as those of children of all ages. Over the course of an hour, audiences will encounter short pop-up performances throughout Chicano Park representing a montage of music, magic, and memories; a joyful experience of community connection and radical belonging.
Déjà Vu Kabaret by Alara Koroglu and Frederick Zennor
Off the Beat Productions
East London Theatre Collective
20- 22 July 2023
The Old Red Lion Leytonstone
Déjà Vu Kabaret is an immersive protest musical chronicling the fight for environment justice as it escalates to a revolution for freedom.
“This is just the beginning, we will keep on fighting.”
Deep in the depths below the Nomad Park, a lonely performer prepares her act. Beneath the earth and amidst the soil, a late night cabaret show becomes both a haven and a battlefield as its cast of performers face off against a fascist government who will stop at nothing to silence their voices.
Déjà Vu Kabaret is based on a real story from Istanbul that began with environmental protests in 2013 that rapidly turned into a revolution in Turkish history — the Gezi Park Protests. Centred around a mounting pressure from the police and the governmental based news platforms spreading propaganda and censoring the protests, activists established a cabaret beneath the park where artists would perform to challenge the laws and policies being enacted. This led to immediate plans from the authorities to tear down the cabaret, and the tragic consequences for the performers and audience one June evening in 2013.
It’s a play that challenges where and when you can forget about your problems, the privilege associated with that choice and a call to audiences to feel freely, speak freely, and live freely.
Performed and created for the historic Red Lion, Leytonstone — this site-specific immersive protest musical takes place across five different rooms in order to take the audiences on a journey to unveil what really happened to these protesters on June 15th, 2013.
Bloody Influencers by Ena Begovic and Ben Mansbridge
East London Theatre Collective
January 2023
Barons Court Theatre
May 2023
Sweet@The Poets, Brighton Fringe Festival
August 2025
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Bloody Influencers is a one-woman, original comedy piece about the inner life of social media influencer, Daisy. Following the story of Daisy's rise into becoming Instagram famous, this play grapples with what it means to find happiness in the real world when our lives our intertwined with an online, digital world. Winner of The Review Hub Award: Best Show of Brighton Fringe 2023.
STRIKE! by Tracy Ryan
Ardent Theatre Company
13 April - 6 May 2023
Southwark Playhouse
Directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward
Assistant Directed by Sofia Zaragoza
Dunne’s Stores, Dublin, July 1984. A South African grapefruit starts something that will take nearly three years to finish…
It’s a hot, hot summer and Frankie Goes to Hollywood are riding high in the charts. At Dunne’s Store, shop assistant Mary Manning refuses to ring up a grapefruit, sticking to her union instructions not to handle South African goods, in protest of the country’s apartheid policies. Mary is immediately suspended and it’s not long before she and eight other young women and one young man, all workers at Dunne’s, are out on strike. It’ll only last a few weeks…
Full of passion and humour, Strike! is the true story of the hardships and personal sacrifices, the friendships and camaraderie these extraordinary young people experienced as they stood up for what they believed in.
As their understanding of the suffering under apartheid in South Africa and the politics within their own Government deepened, they began a journey that would change their lives, and Ireland, forever.
The Phase by Zoe Morris and Meg McGrady
Chromatic Creative
7th March - 12th March
VAULT FESTIVAL
Directed by Izzy Rabey
Assistant Directed by Sofia Zaragoza
It’s 2014, Gay marriage has just been legalised in the UK, and Rowan and their LGBTQ+ bandmates want to sing it from the rooftops. But their all-girl Catholic secondary school has other ideas. Disbanded and reprimanded, the group has a choice: do they bow down, retreat, and let the school rules divide them? Or, through all the angsty mess of adolescence, do they unite and fight back to make a change?
The Phase is a coming of age story, filled with catchy pop and pop-punk songs that you won’t be able to get out of your head! A hugely exciting piece of new British musical theatre written by two upcoming, award-winning writers Zoe Morris and Meg McGrady.
Organized Chaos by Pravin Wilkins
University of East London MFA Theatre Department
8th July 2022
University Square Stratford Campus
Organized Chaos explores how the Workers Rights and Labour Movements of 2020-22 can lead to tangible change within a community. In a moment where we are seeing extreme exploitation at the hands of our capitalistic society, Organized Chaos will juxtapose the fictional world of characters unionizing at a university with devised moments based on real stories of individuals fighting for workers rights. Organized Chaos will be a call to action for the audience to understand that these issues are currently being fought for in our local community, and that we must help uplift the stories of the current struggle.
The Odyssey: A Modern Adaptation
The Template Theatre Troupe
UCSD Theatre and Dance Department
January 2018-June 2018
March 2021-August 2021
Sofia Zaragoza's world premier production of The Odyssey was a devised adaptation in which Odysseus is an undocumented, queer person of colour who gets lost in the incarceration system after a #BlackLivesMatter protest. This modern adaptation grapples with themes of what it means to create a home in 2021 America amidst the current political landscape. The most recent production took place at The Template in which the audience was immersed in a nomadic experience where they experienced the show in 5 different locations.
This production was originally developed as Sofia's Honours Thesis at the University of California, San Diego. The devised process is based on practices of Viewpoints and Theatre of the Oppressed.
Empowerment Theatre
La Jolla Playhouse and Girl Scouts San Diego
June 2018- July 2018
June 2017-July 2017
June 2016- July 2016
June 2015- July 2015
Empowerment Theatre was a collaboration between La Jolla Playhouse and Girl Scouts San Diego aimed at empowering young women to become leaders of social change within our community. Each year an original full-length play was devised over a summer conservatory with 15-20 young women. Based within Theatre of the Oppressed, some forms and topics tacked within Empowerment Theatre included:
Verbatim Theatre and Gun Violence
Playback Theatre and Sexism
Forum Theatre and Racism
Spoken Word Poetry and Stereotypes
Whitelash
by Johnny Echavarria
Company 157
January 2018- May 2018
Whitelash is a world-primer hip-hop/rap musical developed through Company 157. Whitelash paints a vivid image of the 2016 election on a college campus, beginning with the rising tensions of the primary elections, where members of the Democratic Party become aggressively split between progressive and establishment candidates. We then proceed to the general election, where the divisions grow even stronger. Relationships are destroyed, all media becomes questionable, and even the people we thought we could trust can not be trusted. Whitelash catches a glimpse of social media wars, passionate protests, and the volunteer work that so many young individuals participated in around the 2016 election.
