Luanda Casella

Luanda Casella is a writer, performing artist and theatre director from São Paulo based in Ghent, Belgium. Since 2021, she’s been a house artist at NTGent and artist in residence at deSingel International Arts Centre. Above all, she is an ingenious storyteller who knows exactly how to get her point across. 

Casella’s work is about the deconstruction of language with a main focus on how storytelling influences the ways in which we perceive the world and the role of literature in the development of critical thinking. Her pieces are fundamentally triggered by the digital hypertext and the reading and interpretative strategies of a contemporary audience. Her method is guided by principles of text assemblage and hypertextuality. Focusing on the uses of 'deceptive discourse' in communication processes, and 'unreliable narrators' in classic and contemporary works of fiction, her work has been referred to as ‘awfully intelligent’, ‘surprisingly light-footed’ and ‘horrifically funny’. 

In recent years, Casella has created four unique performances that are touring internationally. 'Short of Lying' (2018) blends elements of the ‘lecture- performance’ with the ‘memoir’, 'Killjoy Quiz' (2020) fuses multiple-choice tests with critical thinking, 'Ferox Tempus' (2022) merges elements of 80’s dystopian novels with (an imageless) computer game about the ecological crisis and the crisis of imagination, 'Elektra Unbound' (2024) combines narrative elements of Greek tragedy with formats as diverse as the theatre audition, the talent show, and the ephemerality of TikTok swiping. With great humor and an atmosphere of mutual complicity, her latest work 'Trouble Score' (2025) lays bare the fantastic, mysterious, and often hallucinatory nature of family dynamics.

With her deep research into unreliable narrators, Luanda Casella has become a reference in the Belgian theatre scene. Her work has been praised as "awfully intelligent" and "horrifically funny". Casella's work has been shown at prestigious venues and festivals, including Theater Spektakel (Zurich), Edinburgh Theatre Festival, HAU (Berlin), Kaserne (Basel), FARaway Festival (Reims), Spielart Festival (Munich), Frascati (Amsterdam), Dublin Theatre Festival, and the Venice Biennale.

In 2018, Casella won the Sabam Theaterschrijf prize for best theatre text at TAZ (Theatre Aan Zee Festival) for 'Short of Lying'. 'Killjoy Quiz' was selected for the Belgian National Theatre Festival in 2022 as one of the best performances of the season. 'Ferox Tempus' was nominated for the Patronage Prize at Zürcher Theater Spektakel. And 'Elektra Unbound' has been selected for the Venice Biennale and once again for the Belgian National Theatre Festival.

Alongside her performances, Casella has a significant career in education and academia. She is currently a teacher at the drama department at the KASK Conservatory, Ghent, and a PhD candidate, with a project focused on her artistic practice. Casella has also been a guest lecturer at leading institutions, including DAS Graduate School (Amsterdam), KABK (The Hague), P.A.R.T.S, School for Contemporary Dance (Brussels), Toneelacademie Maastricht Institute of Performative Arts, Universität der Künste Berlin, Cité Universitaire de Paris, and Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.