Directors in TYA 2025

“I’m here in a room with people who don’t underestimate the young audience. And I’m in a room with people who understand my work. Here I don’t have to explain, defend or assert myself. We talk, encourage each other and give each other hope.” (Participant from Libanon).

The current edition of ‘DIRECTORS in Theatre for Young Audiences: An International Exchange’ came to an end on Saturday, 28 June 2025, after seven days at the Fundus Theatre in Hamburg, marking the 50th year of its existence. Every two years, ASSITEJ Germany invites up to 30 directors of performing arts for young audiences from all over the world to spend a week together. Under the motto “Reassembling the World”, the 30 participants from 22 countries and five continents discussed how the potential of the performing arts for a young audience can be used to create alliances – not only between professionals, but also between children and adults around the world and between communities at local and global level.

As part of the week, the participants met in workshops, attended various performances, met the network of German theater professionals for research in children’s and youth theater and, as a final event, organized an assembly with pupils from schools in Hamburg, in which the voices and wishes of children from the whole world were present. In interviews that all participants had conducted in advance with young voices from their respective environments or work contexts, there were worldwide similarities in the desire to be perceived with their own talents, their own voice, as well as to deal with issues of war and climate change socially, politically and in the theater and to enter into an exchange at eye level with children and young people.

Louis Valente Sørensen, General Secretary of ASSITEJ International, emphasised the importance of the international exchange programme: “I know numerous participants who have brought the experiences from the exchange into their local work contexts and who talk about how enriched they have been by the exchange. The Directors Exchange serves as a model for imitation in many countries.”

In 2027, DIRECTORS IN TYA – An International Exchange will take place at the COMEDIA Theater in Cologne.