Writing for Young Audiences with Young Adults

About the event

In the times of authorial theatre, the creation of productions in which young adults participate as active co-creators expanded from school and amateur stages first to the independent scene and then to public theatre institutions where primary, secondary and university students work with established theatre creators and where the productions that are thus created become a part of the institutions’ regular repertoire. Content-wise, such productions usually explore issues that directly touch young adults, and genre-wise, they cover a wide range, from documentary and auto-fiction to "classical" theatre productions. The creation of theatre texts for such productions usually occurs in collaboration with the performers, usually based on the pre-agreed topic. What are the specifics of such writing, how to begin to co-create with young adults, how to take their ideas, experience and view into account? How to discern a common theme from a multitude of different voices and turn it into a drama text that with be at the same time authentic, relevant and theatrically effective?

The workshop will focus on concrete methods of such writing and is intended for established theatre creators as theatre mentors and others, interested in working with young adults.

Mentors: Ana Duša and Luka Žerdin

Ana Duša worked as dramaturg and educator for the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre productions Vihar v glavi (Storm in the Head, dir. Primož Ekart, 2018) and Pravica biti človek (The Right to be Human, dir. Mare Bulc, 2019). In 2020, she set up the Young Mladinsko Programme at the Mladinsko Theatre and also directed its productions Svoje usode krojači (The Masters of Their Own Destiny, 2022) and Umetnost vojne/umetnost miru (The Art of War/The Art of Peace, 2024). Since 2022, she has been a lecturer at the Department of Speech at the UL AGRFT.

Luka Žerdin is a student of social pedagogy at the UL Faculty of Education in Ljubljana and was, as a high school student, an actor in the productions Pravica biti človek (Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, 2018) and Svoje usode krojači (Mladinsko, 2022).