Elena Pega

Elena Penga was born in Thessaloniki. She studied theater and philosophy at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA (B.A.), and playwriting at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (M.A.). She lived in the USA for 10 years, where she began her career by staging plays in avant-garde theaters in New York. In the 1990s, she returned to Greece and continued writing theater, prose, and screenplays. Her theatrical works include "6 Numbers of Jealousy" (Amore 1998), "The Greek Alien & the Poisons of the Sea" (Fournos 1999), "A King Who Listens" (official participation in the 7th Biennale of Young Artists in Lisbon), "Waltz Excitation" (directed by G. Houvardas), which was performed in Athens, Volos, and Frankfurt, "Käthe Kollwitz Presents a Brief History of Modern Art" (directed by M. Santorinaiou), "3-0-1 Transfers" (National Theatre 2000), "When the Go-Go Dancers Dance" (Booze, 2002). Her work "The Emperor's New Clothes," based on the fairy tale by H.C. Andersen, was staged in Athens in the fall of 1999 at the +Soda club in a multimedia format with notable success, and again at Roes in 2009. Other works include "Nelly Takes Her Dog for a Walk" (Dimitria 2003), "New Friends" (K.TH.B.E. 2006), "Phaedra the Alcestis" (Delphi 2007), "Gorky's Wife" (The Present Co., NYC 1999 and Roes 2009), "Narcissus" (Athens Festival, 2011). Her theatrical and prose texts have been translated into Dutch, Swedish, German, French, Italian, and English, and have been presented in San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, the Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates. She also wrote the screenplay for the award-winning film by Lakis Papastathis "The Only Journey of His Life." She teaches playwriting at the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Patras. Her plays are published by "Nefeli" editions, while her prose works are published by "Agra" editions. Her short story collection "Tight Belts and Other Skins" was awarded the short story prize by the Ouranis Foundation of the Academy of Athens in 2012.