Scottish playwright Peter Arnott will spend two weeks at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California to work with students on the development of a new play commissioned by the University.
The visit is part of a cultural exchange that will see Arnott representing Scottish theatre in meetings with members of the LA entertainment industry and 28 theatre students travelling to Scotland in the summer for an eight-week artistic and educational residency.
Pepperdine has commissioned from Arnott a play about the 1932 march by the "Bonus Army" of First World War veterans on Washington DC to lobby for a promised "adjusted compensation package" promised to them for their war service.
On the Scottish side of the exchange, the American students will meet with theatre artists, academics and fellow students in Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Highlands as well as working on two productions for the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the world première of Arnott's play and the UK première of Anon(ymous) by Naomi Iizuka, a contemporary re-working of Homer's Odyssey that looks at the challenges faced by refugees and asylum-seekers in USA.
Pepperdine is a regular visitor to the Edinburgh Fringe with highly-acclaimed student productions such as The Kentucky Cycle in 2010 and The Grapes of Wrath in 2004.