INTERVIEWS
Interview: Playwright Ashish Kumar Ghosh from India
Ashish Kumar Ghosh directs, teaches, performs, and helps organize the vibrant new chapter of ASSITEJ India. Oh, and he's also a playwright as well. WLPG was lucky to find him with a free moment to answer a few questions.
WLPG: Was there something in particular that motivated you to start writing for young audiences?
Ashish: I can recollect one particular motivation. It was in 1986. I was re-reading the famous fables from Panchatantra, a text from 300 BC. Somehow, I had an auto-suggestion that four fables could be connected to tell a story for today. The play was written in a week’s time. It was in verse with the idea of playing it in folk operatic style. Obviously, it had to be done with trained actors. That was it.
Interview: Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse
Larissa: I was writing film and TV (because I live in LA) when Peter Brosius and Elissa Adams at Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis located me through the Sundance Native Film Program. They were looking to commission Native American writers, and after a meeting we decided to work together. I gave them a few ideas for plays and they picked one that became AVERAGE FAMILY. The process of developing and producing that play with CTC was life changing. I fell in love with the creative, collaborative freedom of playwriting and have made that my career.
Interview: playwright Jeton Neziraj of Kosovo
WLPG: Was there something in particular that motivated you to start writing for young audiences?
Jeton: My first meeting with the dramaturgy for children took place in 2002. I was invited to participate in a Drama Workshop for children, which was organized by a small theatre in Skopje (Macedonia). The workshop was led by Swedish dramaturge Marie P. Hedenius. I believe that the experience I drew from this workshop and the knowledge that I acquired regarding dramaturgy and theatre for children in Sweden was the main motivation that pushed me to begin to write children’s plays. At that workshop, I wrote my first children’s play “Sytë e shkruar” (Speckled Blue Eyes) which came to be successful. From that time, I continuously went on writing plays for children. So far, I have written four children’s plays and all of them have been staged and have started to be translated into other languages. And, I should also add that I come from a tradition of dramaturgy for children that is still in its beginning stages.
Entrevista con la dramaturga María Inés Falconi/Interview with playwright Maria Ines Falconi
Como parte de la serie de entrevistas que venimos desarrollando, “Write local. Play global” le planteó a la dramaturga y educadora María Inés Falconi algunas preguntas sobre su trabajo.
As part of an ongoing series, ‘Write local. Play global’ asked Argentine playwright and educator Maria Ines Falconi a few questions about her work.
An interview with seven TYA playwrights (Brian Guehring, USA)
For four weeks this past fall, I joined several TYA/USA members participating in a phone forum focusing on the business of playwriting for young audiences. This series covered such topics as commissioning, developing a playwriting portfolio, and getting published. Led by playwrights Barry Kornhauser and José Cruz González, the forum included such guests as Suzan Zeder, playwright and professor at University of Texas at Austin; Michael Bobbitt, producing artistic director of Adventure Stage in Glen Echo, MD; and Gayle Sergel, vice president of Dramatic Publishing.