Theatre Centre launches skylines; a national programme for playwrights writing for young audiences (UK)

Natalie Wilson, Theatre Artistic Director introducing Skylines (credit: Camilla Greenwell)Saturday 8 September marked the launch of Skylines; a national professional development programme for playwrights wanting to write for young audiences. Over 40 participants, facilitators and Theatre Centre staff attended the Skylines Gathering at Platform, Islington in London to meet, discuss and debate around the theme of writing for young audiences.

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Call for TYA Scripts from The Growing Stage, The Children's Theatre of New Jersey

Our Playwright Series is a wonderful opportunity for artists to have their unpublished works presented before an audience, in a play reading scenario, by a cast consisting of both professional and amateur actors on two separate occasions during our 2012/2013 season. 

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Announcing WLPG Shorts (Cleveland): Unexpected Connections

WLPG Shorts (Cleveland): Unexpected Connections is a collaborative project between Write Local. Play Global. and Theater for Young Audiences/USA toward the creation of original 1,000 word plays from emerging playwrights on the theme of "Culture Clash: Unexpected Collisions and Connections".  The selected plays will be presented as readings on May 9, 2013 in Cleveland, Ohio, at the One Theatre World conference, held in conjunction with the Cleveland International Children's Festival.

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WLPG Featured Playwrights - Willy Conley (USA), Mercy Mirembe Ntangaare, (Uganda) and Karin Serres (France)

From time to time we like to feature some of our member playwrights.  We've recently managed to gather short interviews with three very exciting writers, all of whom write for both young audiences and adults.

And at the end of their interviews, each has posed a question for other practitioners.  We encourage everyone to join in the conversation!

Click on the name of the playwright to read the interviews:

US Playwright Willy Conley

Ugandan Playwright Mercy Mirembe Ntangaare

French Playwright Karin Serres

'The Creation of a National New Works in Translation Network' by Adam Versenyi

A provocation. A proposal. And a plea.

The provocation: What would happen if we were to think of new translations of plays, both classical and contemporary, into English the same way that we think of new plays written in English? Talk to theater practitioners throughout Latin American and Europe and they will frequently tell you how deeply their own practice was affected by the theatrical translations that they have seen and read. Talk to audience members in those regions and they will tell you how much their notions of what the theater is has been formed by work in translation.

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'Censorship. . .and' Self-Censorship/De la censure et de l’autocensure...' by Suzanne LeBeau

I began to write for young audiences thirty years ago because I wasn’t happy with the plays for these audiences that I was performing in. I had fallen in love with an « unformatted » audience. I wanted to offer children the best theatre: accessible, democratic, contemporary, new. But new compared to what? There was no repertoire to point the way, few models to reject or contest. So I developed a culture of questioning. The questions came from the relationship with the audiences (children) – and from outside – adults’ opinions about our work and their comments about childhood and its relationship with life, art, and theatre.

The first question with which I “bothered” myself remains just as current forty years later: who knows and can decide what is best for a child?

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American Alliance for Theater and Education 2012 Distinguished Play Awards

On August 10, at its national conference in Lexington, Kentucky, the American Alliance for Theater and Education announced its 2012 Distinguished Play Awards:  Write Local Play Global congratulates all of the recipients:

Category A: (for middle and secondary audiences)
Teaching Disco Square Dancing to our Elders: A Class Presentation by Larissa FastHorse

Category B: primarly for Pre-K and Elementary school audiences
Balloonacy by Barry Kornhauser
Pirates! by Charles Way

Category C: (Adaptations, Upper Elementary)
A Boy Called Lizard, book by James J. Mellon, Music and Lyrics by James J. Mellon and Scott DeTurk, based on the novel Lizard by Dennis Covington

Category D: (Adaptations, Lower Elementary)
Eggs by Y York, based on the novel by Jerry Spinelli

'The Global Play Project: Shifting Perspectives of International TYA at a US University' by Jenny Anne Koppera

The journey to create the Global Play Project (GPP) began after I returned inspired and rejuvenated artistically from my experience as an intern at the ASSITEJ World Congress and Festival in May 2011.  I was bubbling over with ideas and new friends from across the world, and my goal was to bring this feeling and energy back to Michigan.

At ASSITEJ, I had the opportunity to work on the international playwright slams held in both Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmoe, Sweden, the two host cities.  These slams, which introduced me to 20+ international plays, along with some in-depth conversations with a few playwrights really sparked my interest in international work.   My interest piqued, I was then quite eager to foster dialogue around international TYA and create some cross-cultural relationships.

I proposed the Global Play Project to the Drama and Applied Theatre for Young Audiences Graduate Program at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, and it was then paired with a graduate level course entitled, “The Playwright and The Young Audience,” taught by faculty member Patricia Zimmer.  This class/project interface allowed ten graduate students to partner with me in a variety of roles such as directors, actors and designers to move this Global Play Project from dream to reality!

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Happy Birthday to 'Wiley and the Hairy Man' (rebooted)

A new life for a US TYA classic!

The 40th birthday of Suzan Zeder's play Wiley and the Hairy Man will be celebrated this October in fine style with a brand new production at StageOne in Louisville, Kentucky.  Wiley will be revitalized and reborn as a musical based in bluegrass and American roots music.  Suzan has been working with a Louisville legend, jazz composer and performer, Harry Pickens, for the past six months on this and she says "it is very exciting to give new life to the play that literally launched me into writing for young audiences."

More information on StageOne's website.

LAB007: in search of recent plays

LABOO7 is a professional network dedicated to multilingual theatre experiences for young audiences.

It is based on both a deep knowledge of the international contemporary repertoire for youth
and the powerful richness of the sound and song of languages on stage.  Born in Europe in 2007, it's now opening worldwide, also acting as a go-between for all the contemporary forms of playwriting for children and teenagers.

To increase our knowledge of the contemporary playwriting for the youth, LABOO7 reading committee is looking forward to receiving and reading recent plays (written since 2000), especially plays coming from Spain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, the Czech Republic, Slovaka and Slovenia. They can be aimed to small children, children and teenagers.

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