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Zien Rashad - Founder & CEO

When Zien Rashad arrived in Poland in 2017, it wasn’t with the intention to start a revolution in Kraków’s theatre scene. And yet, just a few years later, that's exactly what he did. As the founder and creative force behind the KITE Theater and SITFY Poland, Zien has carved out a singular space in Polish cultural life—one where borders blur, languages mix, and stories rise above origin.

Born in Cairo in 1985, Zien began his creative life immersed in Egypt’s artistic traditions. After relocating to Poland, he spent several years performing with the English Touring Theatre Company, appearing in a range of productions such as Only in Poland, Baby, A Christmas Carol, It’s Only a Bed, and Tram 23:11—a play that took him to the Sharm El Sheikh International Festival for Youth, connecting his past with his present in a powerful way.

His screen work includes appearances in Patryk Vega’s Putin, the independent film Abortion Hypocrite, and Polish television dramas like 48 Hours and Rozwód. Yet it was the desire to create space for new kinds of storytelling that led Zien to take the next step.

In 2023, he founded KITE Theater—Krakow Independent Theatre Expats—a platform for original, English-language performance rooted in collaboration and cross-cultural dialogue. While Kraków already had English-language theatre, KITE’s mission is distinctive: to create socially engaged, emotionally honest theatre that reflects the complex identities of its international and local communities.

At KITE, Zien doesn’t work alone. The company thrives on the strength of its talented and diverse team—actors, designers, musicians, and technicians—who come together to explore shared questions through performance. The result is theatre that’s intimate, challenging, and accessible. Zien’s debut play with KITE, Mind Prey, premiered at Teatre KTO and toured internationally, praised for its psychological depth and subtle humor.

His 2025 production, Between Heaven and Earth, explored guilt and moral reckoning in a stark, character-driven setting and was met with enthusiastic audiences at Dworek Białoprądnicki Cultural Center.

Zien’s work is marked by minimalist staging, bold ideas, and a commitment to storytelling that invites reflection rather than easy answers. Through KITE, he is helping shape a space where diverse voices are heard and where audiences—expats and Poles alike—can experience theatre that speaks to their shared humanity.

Zien is also co-founder and a member of the high committee of SITFY Poland, the local European edition of the Sharm El-Sheikh International Theatre Festival for Youth. First launched in 2024 and returned in May 2025, the festival in Kraków showcases monodramas from around the world and brings multiple cultures together in the heart of Krakow. As both co-organizer and artistic leader, he has helped shape this free-entry cultural event as a meaningful crossroads of Eastern and Western artistic voices, drawing on local and Egyptian creative partnerships .

Zien is not just a guest in Poland; he is deeply rooted here. After seventeen years in Poland, he often speaks of Kraków not as a second home, but his first one now.

Through his work with KITE and beyond, Zien Rashad is not only enriching Polish theater—he’s reshaping it. In a world where borders harden and cultures retreat, his theatre dares to stay open. It invites everyone in, no matter the passport or mother tongue.

Zien once said, “Theatre is a place where we see the truth together—and once we’ve seen it, we can’t unsee it.”

That truth, it turns out, is not only on stage—but in the life he’s chosen to live.

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