Arts Advocate and Local Actor Zaki Abdelhamid Promoted to Intiman Theatre’s Director of Education & Community Programs

SEATTLE— Intiman Theatre announces that Zaki Abdelhamid, who has worked with the theatre in many capacities since 2004, including as an actor and advocate for community engagement, has been promoted to Director of Education & Community Programs. He joined Intiman’s staff earlier this season as Annual Fund Manager, a position now held by Amanda P. Gomez.

Born in Jordan , Abdelhamid studied Political Science at the American University of Beirut before moving to the United States , where he earned his undergraduate degree in Theatre from SUNY Albany and M.F.A. from the Professional Theatre Training Program at the University of Delaware . In 2003, he moved to Seattle , and within one week of his arrival was cast in his first job as a local actor, in Intiman’s production of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul.

Abdelhamid has also appeared at Intiman in the American Cycle production of All the King’s Men, and locally in Sonya Schneider’s Wake and productions for Seattle Public Theater and GreenStage. He is currently appearing in Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes by Yussef El Guindi at Theater Schmeater. In addition to his work as an actor, he was a grants administrator at the Marguerite Casey Foundation for three years.

Since 2006, Abdelhamid has been involved with all the major programs of the American Cycle series of great stories and free public programs. Each Cycle play is the centerpiece of numerous city-wide events that encourage conversation and debate about issues relevant to the Seattle community, and that reach out to people for whom there is little or no access to the arts. He has been a member of the Cycle’s Core Audience, participated in the Front Porch Theater series of readings and discussions, and worked with Rough Eagles students from Cleveland and Roosevelt High Schools who come together each year to develop and perform an original creative response to each Cycle play.

In his new position, Abdelhamid will supervise all of these programs as well as community collaborations developed around Intiman’s new five-year International Cycle, which will launch this year with a production of Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined that will run at Intiman and travel to South Africa’s Market Theatre. He will also oversee Living History, which brings teaching artists to schools from Seattle to Eastern Washington for intensive week-long residencies.

In a new initiative this season, Abdelhamid will curate a special community program for each production, designed to promote civic engagement, increased diversification of Intiman’s audience and new opportunities for collaborations and cross-disciplinary partnerships. Information about the first of these programs, “Parallel Voices” (which will highlight similarities between the Great Depression of the 1930s and today) will be announced in connection with the opening production of the 2010 Season, Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets.

Intiman’s Director of Education & Community Programs position is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Intiman’s Education and Community Programs are supported by Fales Foundation, Humanities Washington, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Starbucks Coffee Company, U.S. Bancorp Foundation and Wells Fargo.

Seasonal support for Intiman Theatre is provided by ArtsFund; Intiman Theatre Foundation; Kreielsheimer Remainder Foundation; The Leading National Theatres Program, a joint initiative of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; The Shubert Foundation; and Washington State Arts Commission.