Yaz is an anglo-Egyptian writer and director of stage and screen. He was mostly raised in the Peak District, outside Manchester, and has lived across Europe.
He set up his first theatre company, Three’s Company, aged 13, when all the cooler kids were setting up rock bands. Then he filmed those rock bands with his brother. Ever since then, he’s been drawn to beautiful stories and funny ideas… and the theatre company is still going (unlike the rock bands).
Yaz recently directed his first television on Hollyoaks for Lime Pictures/C4 and completed a Shadow Director Programme with Sky Studios on The Rising.
Yaz’s original screen projects include An Admin Worker At The End Of The World, a short film about isolation and inaction, and Ruth, a silent one-take ghost story.
Previous short films include None Of The Above, a car-based farce that escalates into a fantasy spoof (Best Dark Comedy at Houston Comedy Festival), and Silent Night, a black-as-coal Christmas home-invasion comedy. Yaz also co-created and directed web series Missing Something (Guardian Top 5 Female-Fronted web series; Austin Web Fest Official Selection).
Yaz has directed theatre across the world. His projects range from Boris: World King, a comedy about the then-mayor-of-London (which transferred to Trafalgar Studios after two sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe); to ground-breaking all-female productions of Shakespeare’s Othello and Titus Andronicus with Smooth Faced Gentlemen. Recently he directed Monster and Fanboy with the acclaimed Worklight Theatre Company.
Yaz trained at Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. In 2017 he was awarded a place on the Jerwood Director’s Programme and shortlisted for the Old Vic 12 award. He assisted Joe Hill-Gibbons on A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Young Vic, and collaborated with Rachel Delahay to create Dead Reckoning, a five minute play about mixed racial identity, also at The Young Vic.
In addition, with Three’s Company, Yaz is co-creator, co-writer and co-performer in Adventure Department, a spoof podcast in a different genre each episode.
Yaz also works with his brother Haz as Brother Brother. Together they make commercials, documentaries, branded content and music videos across Europe. This has afforded him a broad range of on-set experience in a broad range of positions, with a variety of different crews in a variety of different countries.
Yaz Al-Shaater is represented by Frances Arnold