The Young & Hungry Arts Trust Calls for Submissions for 2010 Playwright's initiative

The Young & Hungry Arts Trust, in partnership with Auckland Theatre Company, announced that submissions for their 2010 Playwright's initiative are now open.  The theme for 2010 is: FRESH.

Submissions close at 5 pm October 31st 2009.

Young & Hungry is calling writers from all over the country to submit plays written specifically for 15-25 year-old actors, designers, crew and marketers.

Every year Young & Hungry commissions three brand new New Zealand plays through its very own Playwrights Initiative. Thanks to the new partnership with ATC the 2010 writers will be given a unique opportunity - the potential to have their work developed for production in two centres and produced by two different creative teams simultaneously. 2010 plays will be presented in 2011.

Three plays, two cities, over 100 Young and Hungry theatre-makers.

The Playwrights Initiative feeds the Young & Hungry Festival of New Theatre which was set up in Wellington in 1994 as a means to provide young people with the opportunity to work on professional quality scripts written specifically for youth. Each year hundreds of 15-25 year olds audition for cast and crew and over 60 successful auditionees in Wellington, Auckland and now Dunedin are mentored by professionals through all aspects of what it takes to mount a theatre production, from acting to design to marketing to backstage crew.

The unique aspect of the Young & Hungry system is the Mentoring program, where industry professionals actively support and develop young people and provide them with a broad range of skills and practical experience to enable a new generation of theatre-makers to create and participate in telling our stories on stage.  The Trust’s point of difference from other arts organizations and educational providers is that they provide writers, actors, designers, and crew members with the opportunity to work on a live project, namely a project that has a timeline, a deadline, high-level outputs and that is distributed in a professional forum .

Mentors are employed not only to mentor the participants but also to ensure the delivery of the specific outputs related to their particular area of expertise within the Festival - this has the effect of raising the stakes for both the mentor and mentoree because there is a non-negotiable timeline for the delivery of the outputs (i.e. set and costume design, etc). The process is therefore hands-on, specific and product-focused with very clear milestones for the mentee to achieve and if they are not achieved the show can’t go on, a pretty compelling incentive.

For more information visit www.youngandhungry.org.nz or email young.hungry@gmail.com.

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