Diana Arushanian is an artist and theatre-maker based in the UK. Her work explores themes of invisible illnesses and diasporic narratives, often using her own Russian-Armenian heritage as inspiration. Her approach to devising and staging a work prioritises sensory and movement processes as a way to recognise that some things can be hard, or simply not necessary, to speak. 

Her most recent directorial work is If I Were to Say It in English by Thea Lungu, which will be running at the Roundhouse in London on October 30–31. Book here.

The play explores what happens when English fails in translating emotion. The story follows Nath who begins to recount her experiences as an immigrant in the UK to untangle complicated feelings towards her country. Diana constructs ways of portraying memory and communication as forms of protest, supporting the blend of English and Romanian language that attempts to patch up doily-like wounds of young people living through current geopolitical conflicts. 

If I Were to Say it in English previously ran as part of Voila! Theatre Festival in November 2025 and later as part of the 360 Festival at Roundhouse in April 2026. The work was nominated for the OffFest Awards 2026 – recognition given by the OffWestEnd Awards (Offies) to outstanding independent and fringe theatre productions that premiere at UK and international arts festivals.

In 2026, Diana directed the Lighthouse Ensemble’s Dragonfly Girls by Ellie-Ffion Jones at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in London. Events of the play unfold over an evening at a family home where Laura meets her sister Jane as their grandma receives palliative care upstairs. Complex familial relationships unfold with echoes from the past as the characters navigate what it means to live beyond trauma. In light of the rise of domestic violence in the UK the play shares a new perspective on survivor narratives spotlighting victims secondary to abuse. A portion of the profits was donated to Women's Aid.

In 2025, she directed Life is Absurd but Love is Good by Asia Pshenychna at the Cockpit Theatre as part of Nights or Ukraine – an ongoing series of live performances uniting artists through theatre, poetry, and music to support humanitarian efforts. The play follows a couple, Klara and Dennis who, kept awake by air raid sirens, grapple with their reality and possibilities for the future, each in conversation with their friend, the Black Sea. To translate a processing of trauma that is grounded in cultural mythology, the personification of the Black Sea, choreographed to tiptoe with and against the couple, blurred the line between fiction and reality in lives that feel absurd.

Diana is currently in the development stage of a new production exploring the hierarchies of language in parallel experience of migration between friends whose background and outlook for the future tugs their relationship taught. The play will be devised in collaboration with Thea Lungu; a Romanian poet based in the UK who recently worked with the Roundhouse, Apples and Snakes and Legal Aliens Theatre.