Holding a degree in “Visual Arts and Theatre” from the IUAV University of Venice in 2006, Silvia Costa’s visual and poetic theatrical practice is informed by her work on the image as a catalyst for audience engagement. Playwright, director, performer and set designer, Costa moves between artistic disciplines to explore the medium of theatre.

Since 2007, she has gained recognition for her creations – as an actor and director – at major Italian festivals and on the international stage. In 2013, she was a finalist for the Premio Scenario, one of Italy’s leading theatre competitions, with her work Quello che di più grande l’uomo ha realizzato sulla terra.
In 2016, for the Festival d’Automne à Paris she created an adaptation of Jules Renard’s novel, Poil de Carotte for the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers.
In 2018, her play Dans le pays d’hiver, inspired by Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, made its international debut at the Festival d’Automne à Paris. In 2019, she directed and conceived Spiel Wry smile Dry sob, a choreographic and musical installation inspired by Beckett’s play Comédie, which she also staged in German at the Landestheater Vorarlberg in Bregenz. In 2021, she created a new play based on Annie Ernaux’s Mémoire de fille for the Residenztheater in Munich and then La Femme au Marteau, which centres on the figure of composer Galina Ustvolskaja.
Costa made her operatic debut in 2019 with Claude Vivier’s Hiérophanie, followed by Antonio Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans in 2020. In 2021, she presented Il Combattimento ou la théorie du Cygne Noir at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
In 2022, she helped stage the world premiere of Like Flesh, a new chamber opera composed by Sivan Eldar, which received the 2022 Fedora Opera Prize. The same year, Costa was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
In January 2023, she directed Noye’s Fludde by Benjamin Britten and, in April, created L’Orfeo, favola in Musica by Monteverdi for the Staatsoper Hannover.

Penda Diouf’s plays, La grande Ourse, winner of the Text’avril Festival Jury Prize at the Théâtre de la Tête Noire in 2018, the 2021 Collidram Prize, and finalist in the 2022 Prix Sony Labou Tansi, and Pistes…, which won the La Chartreuse reading committee prize and the award for best German radio fiction in 2022, broadcast on France Culture, are published by Quartett. Two productions are planned in Canada and France. She also wrote Gorgée d’eau for the Lycéens citoyens programme supported by the TNS, the Colline, the Grand T and the Comédie de Reims. Maëlle Dequiedt staged the play. Two of her plays for young audiences, Le bleu des mots and L’arbre, were published in 2022 in collections by Théâtrales jeunesse. Her plays have been translated into German, English, Armenian, Czech and Finnish.
She has been awarded residences at the Institut français de Tunis, the Royal Court in London, Villa Albertine in New York, the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, and the Maison des écritures in La Rochelle. She has also made a documentary, Voies sensibles : l’art de marcher en Seine-Saint-Denis for France Culture.
Over the last two years, Penda Diouf has also participated in the “Opéra de ci de là” programme of the Festival d’arts lyriques d’Aix en Provence. She wrote songs for Bengue, an album by Fidel Fourneyron, which won an award at the 2019 Victoire du Jazz. She is also the co-founder, with Anthony Thibault, of the Jeunes textes en liberté label, which aims to support contemporary stage writers and promote a greater diversity of storytelling and representation on stage. Penda Diouf is a laureate of the Mondes nouveaux programme, for which she created La nuit des reines at the Basilica of Saint-Denis in 2023.