Guinea, Burkina Faso
Actor
(1936 - 2010)
Malian-born actor and playwright Sotigui Kouyaté is one of West Africa’s most respected actors, best known for his role in London River (2009), which earned him the Silver Bear for best actor at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival.
Kouyaté was born into a griot (traditional troubadour-historian) family. As a child, his Guinean-born parents moved to Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and he later took a government civil service job and became a member of the national association football team. After appearing in a play in 1966, he soon gave up professional football to pursue an acting career. He joined the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris and began a long association with director Peter Brook, for whom he played numerous roles. Kouyaté played Prospero in William Shakespeare’s Tempest directed by Brook in 1990, which was adapted by Jean-Claude Carrière. From 1984, Kouyaté lived mainly in Paris, but in 1997 he founded Bamako’s Mandeko Theatre, where he staged several of his own plays.
