Are you passionate about creating theatre for young audiences? DIRECTORS IN TYA – An International Exchange 2027 is now open for applications, offering a space to research, experiment, connect and shape the future of theatre for young audiences.
🌐 Theatre directors specialising in TYA from all over the world can apply. Each ASSITEJ centre can issue one letter of recommendation. Please get in touch with your National Centre.
New: Applicants from Germany 🇩🇪 also need a letter of recommendation from one of ASSITEJ Germany's member theatres.

In 2027, the next edition will be hosted by COMEDIA Theatre Cologne which focusses on common spaces and community-based work in the arts.

COMMON SPACES are places of gathering and togetherness. Places that serve equal exchange, benefit a variety of people and are open to all. They are spaces that belong to those who shape them and are shaped by those who inhabit them. Spaces that are inhabited by communities and themselves give rise to communities themselves.

How can a theatre be a place of encounter? What is either a desire or a claim in many places is already practice and reality elsewhere. But what does this look like? And how is it shaped by, with and for young people?

For one week, COMEDIA Cologne is opening its theatre to the participants of the ASSITEJ DIRECTORS IN TYA – An International Exchange so that they can create their own COMMON SPACE. Which aesthetic practices of shared spaces with children and young people do the individual participants bring with them? Which ones does the group collectively produce? How do these practices shape the space? And how can this idea of COMMON SPACE serve as a blueprint for one’s own work for, with and by children and young people?