Penda Diouf (Senegal/France) is an author, playwright, actress, and librettist, born in France. Her very first play POUSSIÈRES was presented by the Comédie-Française in 2010. Since then her work has been translated into German, English, Armenian, Czech, and Finnish. She has received various awards for her plays in France and Germany, and has held residencies at the Royal Court in London, the Institut Français in Tunis, the Villa Albertine in New York, and the Théâtre National in Strasbourg. Diouf’s work deals with questions of identity, invisible histories, and ecological issues. Together with Anthony Thibault, she is also co-founder of the Jeunes textes en liberté. Penda Diouf lives in Lille.
“In speaking of these deep, lingering wounds that colonialism and racism have inflicted, and how she speaks of them, Diouf does the only thing that can perhaps help, at least a little, to heal trauma: she brings them out of the repressed, the concealed, the forgotten into our consciousness, and she does it in such a poetic and empathetic way that when we listen to her, even white people, descendants of the European colonial powers, are deeply touched and moved to reflect on the causes of these wounds and to relate to them.”
