ABOUT

Aysha Zackria is a dramatist, writer, and musician studying at Carnegie Mellon University. She seeks to amplify important issues through dramaturgy, playwriting, and other acts of creation. By focusing on social convention through an activist’s lens, she searches for foundational truths about humanity. Her latest act of amplification was Possession, a one act devised work about stolen artifacts in a museum, which was produced at Carnegie Mellon’s 2022 play festival. As the director, she facilitated a decolonial space that prioritized the actors' ancestral connection, lived experience, and empowered embodiment above text-based knowledge. As a playwright, she won the national Scholastic Arts and Writing “One Earth Award” for Hell and High Water, addressing the dangers of climate change. She has served as Script Editor at Lovewell Institute for the Creative Arts, a non-profit that encourages high school students to make their voices heard by devising works of musical theatre. In 2019, she won the Miami Herald’s “Silver Knight Award in English and Literature” for her work as a tutor and advocate for improving access to literature in correctional facilities. Aysha is also an accomplished musician with a background in music theory. As an instrumentalist, she has played bass in thirteen musicals.