More than 200 young people from across Europe are to unite in Birmingham for a five-day celebration of youth theatre.
Fourteen companies will perform as part of the For / With / By: Festival of European Youth Theatre at Birmingham REP.
Steve Ball, the REP’s associate director for learning and participation, said, “For / With / By is a celebration of the thousands of young people who take part in youth theatre groups every week across the UK and Europe.
“Here at The REP, we believe that theatre and the chance to participate in high-quality drama activities should be open to every young person. Performing, learning and participating in theatre can have life-changing experiences and I think that during the festival you’ll not only see some incredible theatre making, you’ll also see young people having real drive and passion for something they’ve chosen to be part of.”
The festival programme includes a broad range of plays from the classic Antigone to the topical Windrush-inspired The Place for Me.
La Joven Compania from Madrid visits with Playoff, a show about an all-female football team. Assitej Poland’s Story Lab is a play inspired by interviews with Polish people about the ‘60s sexual revolution compared with present-day teenagers’ sexuality.
Kildare Youth Theatre from Ireland asks if you can forget the past in The Act of Oblivion while the Young Rep’s Lightpost company explores the impact of the Windrush—the ship that carried the first Caribbean migrants to the UK in 1948 and the start of modern British multiculturalism—in The Place for Me.
Coventry’s Belgrade Youth Theatre will perform Rise, a new play inspired by the challenges women face almost 100 years since they got the vote.
Northern Stage Young Company will present Where Do We Stand—what it is to live, work and dream in Newcastle in 2018. The Young Vic Taking Part company puts young people’s voices at the centre of all they do and in The Jumper Factory, a cast of men aged 18 to 25 collaborated with eight inmates at HMP Wandsworth to create a new piece of theatre that explores the universal themes of siblings and family.
Liverpool’s Young Everyman Playhouse presents Until They Kick Us Out, a show that looks at political issues today including Brexit and Trump while encouraging audiences to make a change.
People You May Know is the New Wolsey Theatre’s talent development company for young theatre makers. In their play, St*pid F*cking K*ds, they set out to ask questions about what it is that irritates society so much about adolescents.
Prime Youth Theatre presents Punk Rock, Simon Stephens’s play about a group of A-level students; The Regent Academy’s Stoked shows that there’s more to Stoke than its potteries; Leeds Playhouse Youth Theatre looks at mental health in Zoetrope; and Birmingham REP’s Young REP company performs the Greek tragedy Antigone.
Becoming, written and created by Extraordinary Bodies Young Artists from The Lighthouse in Poole, is about being somewhere between 16 and 25 years old and not yet qualified to be a grown-up but not allowed to act like a child either.
The For / With / By: Festival of European Youth Theatre runs from Monday 30 July until Friday 3 August.