Carolina Silva Santisteban

Carolina Silva Santisteban is a Peruvian stand-up comedian, theater producer and LGBTIQ rights activist based in Lima. She graduated in communications from the Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola and studied theater direction in Peru, France, Brazil and Mexico before beginning her comedy career in 2016. In 2017 she debuted her first solo show, Choripan, built around her own experience of coming out and addressing gender roles, machismo, sexual diversity and religion; the show has drawn more than 100,000 views on YouTube and has toured more than twenty cities in Peru, Uruguay, Colombia, France, Spain and Italy.

She has since premiered further solo shows including Humana, Mosca and Que tal rosca, and has received the Peruvian Ministry of Culture's Economic Stimulus for the Performing Arts as well as support from the Iberescena fund. Silva Santisteban directs the International Festival of Performing Arts for Diversity (FIAED) and, with producer Gailee Rodriguez Carpio, co-directs Vodevil, a nonprofit association that promotes Peruvian stand-up comedy and runs the Lima comedy clubs Toma tu Tomate and El Sofa. She also coordinates the Peru leg of Manzanas de Eva, a Latin American collective supporting women in stand-up comedy.