User:Kambai Akau/Maria Mukuka

Maria Mukuka is a Greek/Zambian actress, theatre director and playwright, resident in New York. She is an ambassador of the Zambian culture to the world and through what she has learned elsewhere, contributes greatly to the theater at home.

Life and education
Mukuka was born and bred in Zambia. At the International School of Lusaka, she obtained an IB Diploma and afterwards, proceeded to New York City in pursuit of a career in an acting and obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater.

Career
Mukuka has performed in both the New York, International (Zambian) and University (Brooklyn College) theaters.

She made her debut at the world’s largest solo theater festival as an undergraduate student in New York in a work titled "'Race Free" - a self-authored one-hour long one-woman show in which she explored both her childhood experiences in Zambia and in New York as a bi-racial/bi-cultural artist and the work was named by the festival as a bestseller. This show was later staged at the New York Theater Workshop. She also performed in different shows at The Tank and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, both Off-off-Broadway venues. She also performs in Off-Broadway theaters.

Back home in Zambia, she wrote and directed two plays titled: “Chief Jones” (2018) - a play which explored the concept of identity in modern-day Zambia through the eyes of tradition and modernity, whose production was sponsored by the USA Tow Foundation; and “Swaggering Braggadocio” (2017) in which she played principal roles, the production of which was done in collaboration with Modzi Arts, Zambia’s leading multi-disciplinary art space being ran by Taonga Julia Kaseka, an Artistic Director. She also collaborates with local organizations.

In June 2020, Mukuka was cast in one of William Shakespeare's plays, "Richard II" directed by Saheem Ali, in which she played the role of Queen's lady/servant   in the prestigious Shakespeare in the Park series, making it the second summer in a row that she would get to feature in the series staged on the New York public radio, WNYC due to the Covid-19 pandemic, dedicated to the Black Lives Matter Movement. The play was narrated by Lupita Nyong’o, an Academy Awards winning Kenyan actress in company of award winning castmates such as Phylicia Rashad, John Douglas Thompson, Estelle Parsons and several others. She was earlier featured in the play, Coriolanus by William Shakespeare, directed by Daniel Sullivan, a Tony Award winner and broadcasted in August 2019.

Mukuka is also a Lecturer of Acting at Brooklyn College, The City University of New York and a Dialect Coach with specialization in African dialects for Off-Broadway productions.