Distinctions










BANTUMEN POWERLIST 100

The 100 most influential black personalities in Portuguese-speaking countries

2021
Zia Soares is one of the most respected actresses and theater directors in Portugal and the Portuguese-speaking African countries

Zia Soares, the first black woman artistic director of a theater company in Portugal, was born in Bié, Angola.

Among her most recent works stands out “O riso dos necrófagos” - text, dramaturgy and staging; “Luminoso afogado” – adaptation, dramaturgy and staging; and the first performances produced and performed exclusively by black women in Portugal:  “Gestuário I”, produced by INMUNE (Institute of Black Women in Portugal) and “Gestuário II”, co-produced by INMUNE/BoCA-Biennial of Contemporary Arts – creation and direction.





Award of Merit for ACTING

Association of Women Entrepreneurs Europe/Africa

6th Edition | Hotel Palácio, Estoril

2022
The Association of Women Entrepreneurs Europe/Africa promotes the MERIT TO WOMEN, initiative whose goal is to value and reward the role of women in the most diverse professional areas.

Zia Soares is one of the women awarded in the field of “ACTING” for her unique path in the Performing Arts in Africa and Europe, highlighting the fact that she is the first black woman artistic director of a theater company in Portugal and for being the author and director of the show “O riso dos necrófagos” distinguished as “Best Show 2021/2022” within the scope of the Premio Internazionale Teresa Pomodoro in Milan, Italy.


Photo by: Estelle Valente





O Riso dos Necrófagos / The Laughter of the Scavengers  

Directed and performed by Zia Soares

Best Show
2021/2022 

Premio Internazionale Teresa Pomodoro | Milan, Italy
The international jury chaired by Lívia Pomodoro (artistic director of Teatro No ́hma, in Italy) and composed of Lev Abramovič Dodin (artistic director of Malyj Dramatičeskij Teatr, in Russia), Stathis Livathinos (Greek director), Enzo Moscato (founder and artistic director from Compagnia Teatrale Enzo Moscato, from Italy), Luís Pasqual (Spanish director), Tadashi Suzuki (Japanese director, writer and philosopher), Peter Stein (German director), Oskaras Koršunovas (Lithuanian director), Muriel Mayette-Holtz (French actress and director, artistic director of the National Theater of Nice), Fadhel Jaïbi (artistic director of the National Theater of Tunisia) and Gábor Tompa (Romanian theater and film director, president of the Union des Théâtres de l'Europe), distinguished the show O Riso dos Necrófagos / The Laughter of the Scavengers as Best Show 2021/2022 within the scope of the Premio Internazionale Teresa Pomodoro, “for the transposition of the carnival dimension of a procession ritual into a hypnotic performance with irrepressible energy, which keeps the memory of the dead alive, stimulating the consciousness of the living and rising with the strength of body and voice against any form of imperialism and racism.”

LINK





BANTUMEN POWERLIST 100

The 100 most influential black personalities in Portuguese-speaking countries

2022
Zia Soares is an artist and theater director of Teatro GRIOT, composed of black actors, which work redefines the Portuguese artistic panorama with a different voice than usual.

The show “O Riso dos Necrófagos / The Laughter of the Scavengers”, directed and staged by Zia Soares and co-produced by Teatro Griot and Culturgest, was awarded with the Premio Internazionale Teresa Pomodoro for Best Show 2021/2022.

Later this year, Zia premiered “Uma Dança das Florestas /A Dance of the Forests”, one of the most famous theater plays by Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1986), about “what it is to be independent and free”; she presented “O Riso dos Necrófagos / The Laughter of the Scavengers” at the No’hma Theater, in Milan, and at the Biennale of São Tomé and Príncipe; and at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon, she premiered the performance “Fanun Ruin”, which proposes a reflection on the colonial past, identity and mourning.