The Regina Maria Theater is a partner in the project Dramaturgy with and for young people, initiated by the "Camil Petrescu" Cultural Foundation with the aim of supporting and developing contemporary Romanian dramaturgy, by supporting young playwrights, facilitating their access to professional mentoring and creating contexts for the presentation, publication and promotion of the resulting texts.

The "Camil Petrescu" Cultural Foundation launches the call for applications for Dramaturgy with and for young people, a project dedicated to playwrights up to 35 years old who want to develop a new one-act text based on the theme of mental health. Ten authors will work individually with five playwrights and mentors, and the resulting plays will be performed in front of the public in two evenings of performative readings, on December 2 and 3, at the Excelsior Theater. Registrations are open until October 4th., inclusive, and participation is free.

The project continues the Foundation's concern for current Romanian dramaturgy, previously explored through Dramaturgy in the present tense, but changes the perspective on the way texts are supported. If the first initiative aimed at identifying and promoting already written plays, the new program invests in the time necessary for the writing itself: documentation, formulation of a dramatic hypothesis, successive versions, feedback. The approach probes the complexity of mental health through ten distinct dramaturgical perspectives, exploring how intimate experiences intersect with social realities and are transformed into theatrical material.

The call is addressed to people who are no more than 35 years old on the application deadline. For selection, each candidate will send, by online form, a scene from an original play. The fragment may come from a completed text, from a previously published, staged or presented play, or from a project still in progress. The scene entered does not have to be related to mental health, nor does it have to belong to the play that will be written in the program, as its role is to allow for the evaluation of the writing and the particularities of the dramaturgical voice.

The selection will be made by the playwrights Mihaela Michailov, Catinca Draganescu, Maria Manolescu, Alexandra Felseghi and the playwright Ionut Sociu. The five will then migrate to the position of mentors of the participants. In support of a framework based on reciprocity, the project proposes that each of the five mentors select two authors with whom they will work throughout the project. The names of the ten participants will be announced on October 9.

Between October 10 and November 20, the selected authors will develop a one-act play in individual sessions, organized in a hybrid format, at the Replika Educational Theater Center and/or online. On December 2 and 3, at Excelsior Theatre, the audience will listen to five plays each evening, in the "combates" format. The authors will present their texts, and the audience will vote for a winner of each evening. The readings will be followed by debates with the playwrights, mentors, the audience and a Spanish playwright invited to the project.

The two winning texts will be translated into the international languages of English, French, Spanish and Italian and will form the basis of two radio shows produced in collaboration with Radio Guerrilla. Also, the ten resulting pieces will be published on the platform DRAMATURG.ro, along with translations, interviews, podcasts, critical texts and photo, video or audio materials. The platform thus extends the life of the project beyond the two reading evenings and puts the dramatic texts in direct contact with professionals interested in contemporary dramaturgy in Romania, including directors, actors, producers or performance institutions.

Dramaturgy with and for young people proposes a concrete investment in an often invisible stage of theatre, namely in the time needed for a text to be interrogated, reconsidered and rewritten before meeting its audience. From mentoring to public reading, from translation to radio production, each stage aims to offer new plays the opportunity to be read, discussed and developed further, because the future of Romanian dramaturgy also depends on the chance we give today to texts that are still in the making.

Registrations are made until October 4, inclusive, through the form: https://forms.gle/rb34VmCbmqMXFchA8

For information or questions regarding the project: www.teatrul-azi.ro.

Dramaturgy with and for young people is organized by the "Camil Petrescu" Cultural Foundation and is co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.

The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.

Partners: Excelsior Theatre, Masca Theatre, "Marin Sorescu" National Theatre Craiova, "Mihai Eminescu" National Theatre Timișoara, "Vasile Alecsandri" National Theatre Iași, "Regina Maria" Theatre Oradea, "Andrei Mureșanu" Theatre Sfântu Gheorghe, Replika Educational Theatre Centre, Cervantes Institute, French Institute, Italian Institute, ICR Warsaw, National University of Theatre and Cinematography "ILCaragiale" Bucharest, Faculty of Theatre and Film, "Babeș Bolyai" University Cluj-Napoca, University of Arts Târgu Mureș, "George Enescu" University of Arts Iași, Guerrilla Radio, Radio Romania Cultural, Scena9, happ.ro.