The Lab Community

Velani Dibba was born in Palo Alto, California to a West African immigrant and a first-generation Polynesian-American. She is the eldest of five children in a family of Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, Methodist, California-liberal, Texas-conservative, Polynesian, Caucasian, Asian, and African heritage, and is exceedingly grateful to this family for teaching her the importance of acceptance. She lived in California for the first ten years of her life before moving to The Gambia in West Africa for three years. During her sophomore year of high school, she studied abroad in Maddaloni, Italy and taught herself Italian while attending school with her host sisters. Throughout these relocations, she developed a passion for learning about different ways of life and an immense appreciation for the cross-cultural communicative power of art. She is currently a Culture and Politics major in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She serves on the board of Nomadic Theatre, and serves as a director, producer, and stage manager in DC. Velani seeks to create theater that questions our understanding of those who are different from us, and reaches across our erected borders to further our understanding of the universal human experience.