Omar El-Khairy

Omar is a writer for stage and screen. Having worked with the Court and the Soho as part of their Young Writers' Programmes, in 2010 he travelled to New York with Old Vic New Voices as a fellow of the T.S. Eliot UK/US Exchange. A performance of his short play Longitude was given at the Public Theater. Later that year he took a devised play Burst to the Edinburgh Festival with Paper Tiger, the international theatre and film collective, which Omar co-founded. In 2011, his first play Given the Times was commissioned for a rehearsed reading at the Finborough Theatre as part of Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights. His most recent piece Sour Lips will be performed as one of the Counter-Culture Commissions at the Ovalhouse Theatre in May/June. Other collaborations include Theatre 503, the Arcola, the Lyric, the Unicorn and the Orange Tree.

For screen, his short Tunnels is in production with Idioms Film in the West Bank, Palestine, and Omar is now working on another short The Insatiable Crocodile set in London on the day before the demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He is also developing hs first feature length screenplay, Sheikh.

A graduate in Economics and Political Science from SOAS, University of London, Omar is currently finishing a PhD in Political Sociology at LSE. His thesis, American Statecraft for a Global Digital Age: warfare and diplomacy in a segregated world, focuses on American cultural diplomacy and the shifting question of race from the Cold War through to the 'war on terror'. He is a regular contributor to Mute Magazine and blogs for The Disorder of Things. His interests thus extend beyond drama to include non-fiction and documentary.