FESTHI is a youth theater festival organized by the French Embassy in Senegal and the Gambia, which invites students from Senegalese and Gambian schools to perform a play. The texts are written during a writing residency at the Alliance Française by French-speaking authors from a variety of backgrounds, around a theme chosen each year.
For the third edition of FESTHI, the writing residency took place at the Alliance Française de Banjul from September 25 to October 16, 2023.
The Alliance welcomed Mireille GANDEBAGNI, Irina VASSILEVA and Patrick ZOGHE NDO, who spent three weeks working on their play on the theme of “Mobilités des jeunesses”.
As well as writing their scripts, during their stay in Banjul, the authors had the opportunity to discover the Gambian cultural scene through visits to emblematic cultural sites and meetings with several artists.
The authors also spent a week working with a Gambian cartoonist, Aba T. Hydara, to come up with illustrations that matched the proposed texts.
Finally, the residency ended at the Alliance Française media library, with a presentation by the authors. They were able to present their texts to an audience of students who had worked with them during their stay.
At the end of the residency, the texts will be published in Senegal, and the FESTHI 2023 collection will be distributed to schoolchildren in Senegal and Gambia. At the end of the year, the texts will be performed on stage by the students at the inter-school theater festival.