Description of Award
The ASSITEJ Inspirational Playwrights Awards is an initiative sponsored and adjudicated by Write Local Play Global in partnership with the ASSITEJ Executive Committee.
Highlighting the importance of playwriting in all its manifestations around the world, ASSITEJ honours three persons as “ASSITEJ Inspirational Playwrights” at each World Congress.
Past winners
- 20th ASSITEJ World Congress – Tokyo, Japan (2021): María Inés Falconi (Argentina), Omphile Molusi (South Africa) & Suzan Zeder (USA)
- 19th ASSITEJ World Congress – Cape Town, South Africa (2017): Kevin Dyer (UK), Suzanne Lebeau (Canada) & Rene Fernandez Santana – (Cuba)
This will be administered and adjudicated by the Write Local Play Global network in coordination with the ASSITEJ Executive Committee.
The essence of our work is telling stories on our stages, and this award is created to honor particular writers who have inspired theatre for young audiences in their city, their country, their region, or all over the world.
How they have been inspirational could be very particular and individual, including:
- Writing a play or plays innovative in content and/or form that help transform TYA in their country
- Serving as a mentor and role model to other writers
- Writing politically or socially aware work that challenges entrenched tradition or power in their country or region
- Through their writing, encouraging audiences to see other people, the world and its events in a more profound and human way.
It will be the individual nominator who will ‘tell the story’ of how the playwright they nominate has been inspirational.
Honoring three inspirational playwrights at each Congress allows ASSITEJ to celebrate its broad membership of different genders, ages, backgrounds, cultures, regions and languages. ASSITEJ members come from small and large countries, work for and with different ages of young audiences, and create theatre by a multitude of varied processes. The ASSITEJ Inspirational Playwrights will reflect not only the diversity in form and subject matter of playwriting around the world, but also its global membership of talented playwrights and theater makers.
In addition to the ceremony/reception at which the inspirational playwrights are named, the organizers of the Congress will be invited to work with the EC, WLPG and the selected playwrights to showcase their work in a creative manner, such as performances, translations, readings, etc.
The nominations application information and further details for the term 2021-2024 will be made available later.
Applications can be in the first language of nominator, though, if that language is not English, we will need a translation of the materials into English.
Read the 2017 ASSITEJ Inspirational Playwrights assessment report here.
Read the 2021 ASSITEJ Inspirational Playwrights assessment report here.
