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?

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!

At New Visions/New Voices, we gather together to hear stories: stories of the characters onstage, brought to life by dedicated creative teams; stories of the playwrights’ discoveries through the week of development.  Coming together as a field, we also have the opportunity to share stories about our work around the world: stories of successes and risks, challenges and strengths. 

Zoom out, and you will see another story developing, in which we all play key roles. It is the story of our continuous and ongoing development of theatre for young audiences:  What does our field look like now?  How will we shape it in the years to come?  What are our hopes and dreams for young audiences worldwide? 

Individually, the quotes below may be provocative, funny, or somewhat strange; together, they tell a story.  A story of now.  A story of us.  A story of this benchmark in TYA

In and around the eight full productions being workshopped, New Visions/New Voices includes international and US playwrights slams - and another sixteen unique voices can be heard reading five minute excerpts. 

For a slide show with photos of most of the writers, click here. (Thanks to photographer Teresa Fisher)

 

 

As during the 2010 festival, the Kennedy Center invited international playwrights to attend, to observe, to converse with other playwrights, to find insights into other ways of working. 

The Playwrights:
• Methe Bendix is a playwright, director, and artistic director of Theater Hund in Copenhagen, Denmark. This TYA theatre performs for young audiences at local venues in Copenhagen and on national and international tours.
• Joe Brennan is a storyteller and writer from Ireland. His most recent project, called Star Boy, a wordless play for the early years, is performed by Joe as a one man show.
• Cristina Gottfridsson is from Sweden. A freelance playwright working in TYA, adult theatre, and film, she has written approximately 40 plays which have been performed in Sweden, Europe and now in Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Amaranta Leyva is from Mexico and currently lives in Canada. A playwright and puppeteer, her company is entitled Marionettas de la Esquina. She is currently working on a version of Sleeping Beauty to be presented by the Kennedy Center February 2013.
• Elif Temuçin lives in Istanbul, Turkey. She a playwright, actress and puppeteer for Theatre BeReZe, a company which has been recently recognized as the Best Innovative Theatre in Istanbul

Theater for babies?  Really?  When I first learned of this sub-genre of the TYA field, I responded with the same healthy skepticism I suspect is shared by many theater practitioners, even those, like me, devoted to working for children. That creating plays for preschoolers has been a highly regarded practice across the globe for several decades now seemed as incomprehensible as baby-talk

Let’s you and I build the perfect audience for our new play.  While we may differ on a few details, I’ll bet that our ideal audience would share some of these traits:

They would be Eager—they’d rush to their seats, they’d want to sit up close, they would not want to leave when it was over.

They would be Engaged—leaning forward, hungry for action and image and story and surprise. They would not sit with their arms folded across their chests.

They would be Open—open to experimentation, to newness, to things they have never seen before in a play.

They would be Demanding—they’d bust us when our play got boring or maudlin or vague or preachy or pretentious.

They would be Vocal—they’d hoot at the good jokes and gasp at the surprising stuff. They’d cheer when it was over, and then ask the hardest and truest questions imaginable.

And they would be Committed—they’d likely want to come back the next day and see the play again.

There’s a name for this ideal audience. They are called kids. If only we got to write for them. How amazing that would be.