"Is it not the job of any playwright writing for children or adults or both to write was is authentic, true, and makes for a compelling dramatic story. Is it not our mandate to write stories that potentially and hopefully ignite passion and ultimately discussion, particularly with our children? Children, I believe, are available and more than ready for lively discussion and engagement. Perhaps it’s us well meaning gatekeepers who, dare I say, create the barriers."

When I arrived, in 1998, to work at Children’s Theatre Company, the largest children’s theater in the United States, I knew very little about the field of Theater for Young Audiences. I arrived, a nurturer of playwrights and developer of new work, with a head and heart full of playwrights whose work I loved and a hope that, by aligning myself with a large, regional theater helmed by an Artistic Director with a proven track record of producing new plays, I could get the work of the writers I loved produced. This has turned out to be true. In the fifteen years I have been Director of New Play Development, Children’s Theatre Company has commissioned and produced over thirty-five new plays by writers including Nilo Cruz, Kia Corthron, Lisa D’Amour, Melissa James Gibson, Jeffrey Hatcher, Naomi Iizuka, Will Power and Taylor Mac. I have been able to reach out to writers and theater makers whose work thrills me, put money in their pockets and their plays up in gloriously large-scale, professional productions.

I have an imaginary goat named Valencia who loves Payday candy bars, speaks Spanish, English (and goat) and is terrified of chupacabras. Just in case you don’t know, a chupacabra is a maybe mythical / maybe-not-so mythical creature known for sucking the blood of goats. Yes, a goat vampire. They were one of the discoveries I made at the Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices Festival while work-shopping my play The Transition of Doodle Pequeño alongside director, Wendy Bable from People’s Light & Theatre.

March 20th is World Theater for Children and Young People Day. Some of you might be thinking, "Oh lord, why do we need a day to celebrate actors being silly, wearing bright colors and singing obnoxiously at squirming kiddos and bored parents?"

But if you think that's what Theatre for Young People is, you're missing out on truly powerful, hilarious, bold, engaging, surprising theater that might just save the world.

Around the world artists are creating a new stripe of Theatre for Young People that combines the elegance of dance, the innovation of devised theater, the freshness of new plays, the magnetism of puppetry and the inciting energy of new musicals. Kids have access to more and more mature theatrical visions premiering from Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center to Atlanta's Synchronicity Theatre to San Francisco's Handful Players to Ireland to Adelaide to Kosovo to Cape Town.

Every day I go to work to play. What am I?

I’m a theatre director for Patch Theatre Company in Adelaide, Australia. We create and produce theatre for 4-8 year olds. It’s a good as any job I can imagine.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Patch Theatre productions enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of children in places like Japan, Korea, Singapore, USA, New Zealand, Canada and all over Australia and I’m amazed at how universal children’s responses are to our shows.  If ever anyone questions me on the future of theatre, I invite them to sit in an audience of 4-8 year olds and be amazed! Children respond to good theatre experiences with such immediacy, joy and exuberance, you can’t doubt its power and impact.

The advice several writers are given when they are starting out is ‘write what you know’. This is patently stupid advice if taken literally. What I knew when I wrote my first play was very little indeed. If we stuck to that advice we’d never have Lord of the Rings, or Southpark, or Star Trek, or Harry Potter. We wouldn’t have Ben Hur, or movies like ‘Never Let Me Go’.

I have written a minimum of twenty plays for children.  From a child’s perspective, but with a mature artist’s complete battery of considerations and decisions. All the aesthetic decisions, the gender conscious, the provocative, the self-censoring (Please no! – The bad reviews!) the pedagogical (shame on you!!). Important decisions. Insane decisions. We’re even serious when we’re joking, that’s the way it is with humorists. We break taboos, we destroy clichés, we hate any adult who lets them down, lets the children down.  And we do it alone, because there are few forums in which we can share our experiences. Share the criteria that define our work. We know them. Those of us who create artistic, quality theatre for children know them