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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Winners of the Polish TYA play competition announced!

The Jury of the Twenty-Third Theatre for Children and Young People Play Competition (Paweł Aigner, Piotr Cieplak, Tadeusz Pajdała, Waldemar Raźniak and Zbigniew Rudziński) has met and made its decisions.

The three major awards were given to
-Snow (Śnieży) by Robert Jarosz
-Malwinka in the Kingdom of Birds (Malwinka w ptasim królestwie) by Agnieszka Wiktorowska-Chmielewska
-Me as…?  (Ja, jako…) by Stach Szulist

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Looking ahead to New Visions/New Voices 2014

It's not too early to save the dates now for New Visions/New Voices 2014, which will take place in May, 2014, just before the ASSITEJ Congress and Festival in Warsaw.  The creative teams will arrive May 11, 2014, and the conference portion will be May 16-18, 2014.
 
The specific guidelines for participation will be issued in April, 2013, and applications will be due in August 2014.  As with this year, the Kennedy Center will be looking for US and international projects and international playwright observers.   For 'The Translation Project', Kennedy Center will be looking a play that has had a successful production in one language, but not yet in English, a play that will resonate in English-speaking countries.

See you in 2014!

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Royal Court Young Writers Festival 2012

This year, the Royal Court Young Writers Festival ran from 23 February – 14 April, showcasing promising young talent from across the UK – debut plays from young British playwrights with original and diverse stories to tell.

Since 1973, it has been unrivalled in its discovery of new writing, launching writers such as Simon Stephens (2005 Olivier award for Best Newcomer), Christopher Shinn (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008), Bola Agbaje (2008 Olivier Award), Leo Butler, Andrea Dunbar, DC Moore, Michael Wynne and Chloe Moss. Most recently Alia Bano’s play Shades, (Most Promising Playwrights Award at the Evening Standard Award and Critics’ Circle Awards).

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A grand celebration of college and university playwrights and plays

On Saturday, April 21, the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival had its annual awards ceremony, incluing the Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards.

Of special interest to the WLPG community were the awards for Outstanding Theater for Young Audiences play given to Gabriel Jason Dean for The Transition of Doodle Pequeno, with second place going to Shayanna Jacobs for Susan and the Sister Woman.

The playwriting awards are given in a number of categories related to style, form, length, and subject matter, and it's all about support of excellence in new writing - it's less about winning than it is about writing good plays.

The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) is a national theater involving some 18,000 students annually who are part of a network of some 600 colleges and universities in all fifty states.  KCACTF encourages, recognizes, and celebrates the finest and most diverse work produced in university and college theater programs and provides opportunities for participants to develop their theater skills and insight.  For more information, click here.

Four Actor-Writers in Rural Cheshire, UK - '12 Miles From Nowhere On Tour'

In 2009 Action Transport Theatre Company invited four actor-writers to research, compose and ultimately perform a play for the rural youth community of Cheshire, UK. During the two-year process, they met and workshopped ideas with those young people, workshopped together as writers, written collaboratively, presented readings across Cheshire and finally toured the play – 12 MILES FROM NOWHERE – back to the communities where it was formed.

Freddie Machin, actor and co-writer of 12 Miles From Nowhere for Action Transport Theatre, describes the experience in 12 Miles From Nowhere On Tour.

Calling Western Cape playwrights - The SCrIBE Script Writing Competition (South Africa)

An exciting new competition has been announced giving Western Cape playwrights the chance to have their play produced.

The SCrIBE Script Writing Competition is open to playwrights who are South African residents, over the age of 18 and living in the Western Cape. The winning script will be produced for a run in Cape Town from 22 October to 3 November.

The 2012 Scribe initiative is the inaugural competition and will be an annual event. It is the brainchild of the Imbewu Trust, a non-profit organisation set up to nurture and promote the contemporary theatre industry, providing a platform for new works as well as showcasing the best of South African theatre on an international stage.

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A Twin's Story - theatre and hand-made cinema in Mexico

A Twin’s Story, a play for young children written by Berta Hiriart, has just had a successful premiere. Published in the collection Theater of the world for the new generations (Editions SM), A Twin’s Story comes to the stage sponsored by Mexico’s National Fund for the Arts. It was directed by the author, in collaboration with the puppeteer and hand-made cinema artist Arturo López Barrera. This expressive techique, which uses the light projected on a screen to create images that are transformed before the eyes of the spectator, has proved to be powerful enough to touch the sensibility of the audience – children between 3 and 8 years – and those accompanying them.

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"Take a child to the theatre today" by Yvette Hardie

Due to its very special and particular nature - the live moment of interaction, that precious window in which artists are able to touch the hearts and minds, ears and eyes, of those breathing the same air as them, in a unique and intensely personal way - theatre is naturally limited in its capacity to reach every child and young person. But once the audience is there, it is entirely unlimited in its capacity to communicate the essential, the mysterious, the actual and the possible. This is why we as artists must be so vigilant about the work we create, to ensure that every encounter with theatre will be an opportunity for the audience to become more curious, more intrigued, more captivated – and perhaps to fall in love with the encounter theatre offers them.

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