A mathematician by training, Salimata Togora is a theatre writer, novelist and poet whose writing is centred on the status of women and the history and cultures of African and Malian society.
She is the author of ‘Deny et Dénistar’and ‘Un 31 décembre’, published by La Sahélienne and L’Harmattan, and the short story collection ‘Destins de femmes’, which is published by Editions La Sahélienne. She began her journey into dramatic writing through ‘Femmes en scène’, a pan-African project to encourage the participation of women in theatre, and through placements at the Théâtre El Hamra in Tunis in 2010 and 2011. Having worked for a time in sustainable development, she returned to the theatre in 2018 and received an ACCR grant for a residency at La Chartreuse in 2018 and 2019.
Salimta’s residency at the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon is based on the project ‘Trois Petits Sauts’, which was inspired by an event that took place in Bamako in 2019 – the suicide of a woman and her three children. The story is of an actress who plays the role of a woman subjected to domestic abuse and who is about to commit an irreparable act ; the actress uses her character to finally take control of her own life. The first version of this project was selected for the Labo Elan des Récréâtrales in 2019/20 in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso. The final version was to be written at the Chartreuse and premiered in June 2020 in Bamako with the organisations Notre Culture (ANC), Côté Court, and the Active Mission for the revaluing of human integrity and for the fight against the abuse of women in Mali (MARIAM).
Residency postponed to 2021.