January 6, 2016

Hello Everyone!

And Happy 2016! We hope every single one of you had a most excellent Holiday Season and that your New Year is off to a great start. The TYA/USA office is once again fully open and operational after the break, and we’re ready for a new year’s worth of adventures.

The adventures start with this new TYA Connect platform. As I said in my last Note a month ago, we are no longer with Multibriefs.com. Instead we are sending things out directly from the home office. The format will remain the same, however: timely info and announcements from yours truly, plus links from around the Web featuring our members and other relevant stories of note. With that, we find these stories primarily through Google Alerts for current member organizations as well as your press releases and sometimes social media. If you are a current individual or student member with a link featuring your project, article, etc., please pass it on! Note that we generally don’t include links to show reviews, but prefer previews or featured articles about a particular show or new project.

Another exciting adventure is OTW: Sessions 2016 coming up on May 5, 2016 preceding the Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices. Our one-day event will be hosted by Adventure Theatre MTC in Glen Echo, Maryland. I’ll be sending out a separate mailing with more info soon!

We are also working on a brand new website for TYA/USA to be launched soon with updated information on our programs and publications presented in a more user-friendly and dynamic way. One Theatre World 2017 (May 2017 in the San Francisco Bay Area) will also be getting its own website to be launched soon. Stay tuned!

Over at the TYA Blog, we’ve launched a brand new series: Design and Visual Storytelling. Check out current and forthcoming posts HERE.

International News: On The Edge, the ASSITEJ artistic gathering in Birmingham, UK, July 2-10, has released their first wave of show announcements. Ticket packages will be available soon. Check out the goods HERE.

In case you missed it, the Young Playwrights For Change: An Anti-Bullying Play Anthology is here. This collection features fourteen middle school playwrights who participated in workshops on the local and regional level and were entered into the national Young Playwrights for Change competition run by TYA/USA and AATE. For more info and to order click HERE. All proceeds go directly back into the Young Playwrights For Change program.

Finally, to join or to renew your Membership, sign on at the member center. If you have any questions or have trouble logging into your account, please contact us.

Nashville Children's Theatre fosters unique tale of friendship (The Tennessean): Local audiences have grown accustomed to seeing heartfelt stories of friendship and loyalty on stage at Nashville Children’s Theatre. But over the past 30 years, one of the more inspiring tales has actually been unfolding behind the scenes with the prolific partnership of producing director Scot Copeland and company stage manager Daniel Brewer. (Read More.)

Theatre School at DePaul University to Present PROSPERO'S STORM (Broadwayworld.com): The Theatre School at DePaul University will present the world premiere of Prospero's Storm, adapted and directed by Damon Kiely, with music and lyrics by Mark Elliott, based on William Shakespeare's The Tempest, as the second installment of the 2015-16 Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences season. (Read More.)

The Kennedy Center to Present OLIVERIO in 2016 (Broadwayworld.com): The Kennedy Center presents the world premiere production of OLIVÉRio: A Brazilian Twist in the Kennedy Center Family Theater from January 30-February 21, 2016. Part of the Kennedy Center's Theater for Young Audiences 2015-2016 season, the production is inspired by the literary classic, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, directed by Juliette Carillo, with book and lyrics by Karen Zacarías and music by Deborah Wicks La Puma. (Read More.)

Oregon Children's Theatre Receives NEA Grant (Broadwayworld.com): The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced Oregon Children's Theatre is one of four Oregon theater companies (and 1,126 nationwide nonprofit organizations nationwide) to receive an NEA Art Works grant in 2015. (Read More.)

2015 Theatre Year in Cape Town in review (Artlink): Children's theatre is currently receiving a great deal of attention and Magnet Theatre hosted the first theatre production for babies. They created Scoop which they toured to hospitals in the province. This innovative programme will be further developed in the year ahead and as theatre makers start preparing for the 19th ASSITEJ World Congress and Performing Arts Festival for Children and Young People in Cape Town in 2017, the first to be hosted on the African content, prepare for a feast of children's fare. (Read More.)

Crimean children’s theatre to close after alleged harassment (The Calvert Journal): A children’s drama school, located in the city of Simferopol in Crimea, is due to shut after alleged harassment by local officials. (Read More.)