After the success of the award-winning Young Europe IV project, we continue our search for creating new, innovative and current classroom repertoire with "Young Europe V: Life Stories," a collaboration between nine Member Theatres in which the boundaries of youth theatre, new writing and the possibilities of the classroom are explored.
Nine playwrights from ETC Member Theatres across Europe will be given a period of over a year to write a play, guided by "the dramatury of care". They will be provided with one inhouse dramaturg from each theatre and four masterclasses, to ensure multi-voiced guidance.
The playwrights will also follow on-site and online workshops provided by experts relevant to the themes and discuss the given topics to explore the best possible way to tell their story.
The educational departments from each participating theatre shall collaborate to create a fitting educational program around the different plays.
The project will find it’s celebrative finish with a presentation of the results of the project: staged readings of fragments of the plays, combined with a panel discussion with the playwrights at the ETC International Theatre Conference 2027.
Young Europe V: Life Stories
Exploring new, care-driven dramaturgies
What are the stories we need in order to reshape our world? In what structure or form can those stories best be told? Is a traditional dialogue the best way to give a voice to a river, for example? And what does a dramaturgy look like that is shaped by the body, or trauma, both these things not being linear in nature? How do you keep a story that doesn’t follow a traditional arc exciting?
Questions like these will form the starting point for a new Young Europe, in which plays will be written that are driven by a dramaturgy of care, rather than a dramaturgy of conflict.
We are in desperate need of more care. Our current system, always centralizing growth, has driven our planet to the edge. Now there’s no denying it anymore: we have to stop asking ourselves ‘how far can we go?’ and start wondering ‘how do we travel the road ahead?’. Only then can we truly examine what it would take for our planet to start healing. And not only for our planet, but also for ourselves.
A new system that centres care, for each other and for the environment, also asks for a different kind of story. The way we tell stories now, is based on our faulty, current system: almost always following a pyramid structure (symbolising the movement of as much growth as possible and then collapsing into catharsis), and centering one hero, powerful and mostly stabbing things with a spear or a sword.
Ursula K. le Guin refers to this as ‘the killer story’. To cite her:
‘The trouble is, we've all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story.’
In Young Europe V, nine member-theatres team up to explore what these life stories look like and what they could mean for young people. After all, no one needs a change more than our youth, looking for a future that isn't such a given anymore.
By exploring alternative story structures and writing plays that prove that there is always another way, even if you’ve been stuck in something forever, we can inspire youngsters to start thinking outside the box for themselves, and to always remain hopeful.
Participating ETC Member Theatres
- THOC - Cyprus Theatre Organisation (Cyprus)
- Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Germany)
- Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany)
- De Toneelmakerij (Netherlands)
- Het Zuidelijk Toneel (Netherlands)
- Divadlo Jána Palárika in Trnava (Slovakia)
- Slovak National Drama Theatre (Slovakia)
- Malmö Stadsteater (Sweden)
- Constanta State Theatre (Romania)
Playwrights
- Artun Alaska Arasli - Het Zuidelijk Toneel (Netherlands)
- Michal Baláž - Divadlo Jána Palárika in Trnava (Slovakia)
- Nanna Berner - Malmö Stadsteater (Sweden)
- Raluca Cîrciumaru - Constanta State Theatre (Romania)
- Fayer Koch - Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Germany)
- Costas Mannouris - THOC - Cyprus Theatre Organisation (Cyprus)
- Elisabeth Pape - Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany)
- Ráchel Rimarčíková - Slovak National Drama Theatre (Slovakia)
- Nina van Tongeren - De Toneelmakerij (Netherlands)
Young Europe V Kick-Off
From 17–18 September 2025, Young Europe V will officially kick-off with an in-person event at Deutsches Theater Berlin, in Germany.
Over the two days, the project playwrights, mentors and consortium will explore Young Europe V's trajectory, will exchange perspectives in creative workshops, and reflect on the concept of a “dramaturgy of care.”
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