NDiaye published her first play, Hilda, in 1999, fourteen years after the publication of her first novel (in 1985), and a decade before winning the Prix Goncourt for her tenth novel (in 2009). Her development as a playwright thus takes place alongside a steadily growing success as a novelist, seeming to nudge the novels into new and often more overtly politicized territory. The first major stage production in France of Hilda was in 2002 at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris, where Frédéric Bélier- García staged the piece, and the well-known actress Zabou Breitman starred as Mme Lemarchand. The play went on to win the Grand Prix de la Critique. The following year, NDiaye's third published play, Papa doit manger, made history on all kinds of fronts by entering the repertory of the Comédie-Française. It was the first play by a living woman (and only the second play by any woman) to enter the 323-year-old company's repertory, and this was also the first time, allegedly, that a ‘black’ actor had been taken on as a member of the theatre's troupe. Since Papa doit manger there have been productions of all six of NDiaye's plays, as well as Toute Vérité, the play she co-authored with her husband Jean-Yves Cendrey, all over Europe and the United States. In 2012, following the success of her shocking play Les Grandes Personnes – a spectacle of depressive revenants, parental demons and child sex abusers – NDiaye received the ultimate theatrical accolade, when she received the Académie Française's Grand Prix du Théâtre.