I first met Maya Zbib on the phone. She was interviewing for the MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths. We had several conversations between rural France and Beirut during the summer of 2006 as the bombs of that relatively short 34-day war detonated around her. She was very worried that she might not be able to get out of the country. She eventually managed, and arrived in London for an intensive year of study at the lively Goldsmiths campus.

Maya proved an exceptional student both intellectually and creatively. She made memorable solos, astonishingly intimate and immediate. A remarkable site-specific promenade work co-created with a small international group of women took the audience to an institutional residence in which bedrooms and bathrooms revealed shocking installations relating to women’s subjugation. Her space was lined with an irregular map of the world. Maya in this tiny room on her ruffled bed was curled like a prisoner in a cell, or a sex-slave. A woman microcosm: filling a tiny space with the global reach of her associations.

In Beirut, Maya is one of a collective of six theatre makers from Lebanon established in 2006: Zoukak Theatre Company and Cultural Association. This tight knit group...