Katori Hall, whose Olivier-winning play The Mountaintop had its world premiere in Theatre 503 above a Battersea pub and is now preparing for an Autumn run on Broadway with Samuel L Jackson playing Martin Luther King, is back in London with a new play. Children of Killers is about life in post-genocide Rwanda as a group of teenagers prepare to meet their fathers – otherwise known as the men responsible for the atrocities – now released from prison and returning to the village. The play is one of 10 pieces of new writing to be performed at the end of the month by young people as part of the National Theatre Connections Festival.

When you write a play, you don’t tell the whole story. You have to take the audience to the hottest part of the story - and show the stuff that both leads to that moment and also spins off from it. Finding the hottest moment is, for me, the key.

On 28 March, 2011, playwright James Still delivered an inspirational keynote address at the Cohen New Works Festival, University of Texas at Austin. HowlRound, the Journal of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, has uploaded it at:

howlround.com

‘Write local. Play global’ tracked down Australian playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer (not that hard, actually, since he’s a bit of a fanatic about email) and asked him a few questions about his work.

 

 WLPG: Is there a production, playwright, theatre company that has influenced your work?    

 Fin: Many. At nine, I watched The Postman by Vélo Theatre and still feel inspired by it now (I met the actor two years ago at a festival and he still performs the show!). The writing of Suzanne Lebeau impresses me over and over. Maurice Sendak has the most wonderful imagination and means of conveying it. And Theatre Artemis’ show Prime I think may be the most beautiful show I’ve ever seen.

Unofficially, I started writing plays for children when I was ten years old. I grew up in Mexico, one of the oldest of 18 cousins. During a long rainy summer I determined, in that responsible (i.e bossy) fashion of all first-borns, that I should write, direct, and star in my own epic play. Like many playwrights before me, I was inspired by the Greeks. The original Clash of the Titans (starring Harry Hamlin and Laurence Olivier) had a deep effect.

My first play, I realize now, was also my first adaptation.

'In this case study on arts for the very young in Bologna, Italy, I want to look behind the productions of ASSITEJ Award winning company La Baracca to see the context of their work. As with the renowned approach to early childhood education of the city of Reggio Emilia, 60 kilometres from Bologna and also a part of the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, I believe that the drive to create wonderful arts experiences for the very young comes from a diverse group of people and organisations in Bologna and the Emilia Romagna region.'

'Theater von Anfang an! (Theatre from the very beginning!) is Germany’s first theatre festival for the very young, and the culmination of a two year project of the same name coordinated by the Children’s and Young People’s Theatre Centre in the Federal Republic of Germany (KJTZ). This extraordinary project, focusing on the four German cities of Berlin, Hamm, Mannheim and Dresden, involved theatre companies, childcare facilities and universities in a range of activities.'

Cultural Translation in Four International Collaborations:

US Artists Dance with Theater-makers from Denmark, Iran, Ireland, and Jordan

By Kim Peter Kovac and Megan Alrutz

Many of us in the field of theater for young audiences are working on “building bridges and crossing borders” across real and imagined international lines.  Throughout this work, theater-makers and presenters are engaged in processes of “cultural translation” that encourage, if not require, us to consider issues of language and theme, as well as the transfer of multiple cultural contexts to the rehearsal process and to our audiences at large. International collaborations invite us into each others’ worlds – both artistically and culturally – offering exciting new ways of imagining theater for young people and reminding us of the complexities of making art in an age of globalism.