Children’s and Youth Theatre

Since 1996, the German Children’s Theatre Prize and the German Young People’s Theatre Prize are awarded every two year. They can be read as a barometer of dramatic aesthetics for the young audience.

Dance pieces for children and young persons are still a rarity in Germany. Yet are some contemporary choreographies that are well worth seeing, particularly those that differ from danced stories and take the license to put themes in motion in a very different way.

For almost ten years now German theatre-makers for a young audience have been conquering a new area of competence and a new audience group. In this time theatre has developed art for children in the pre-narrative phase, that is, for children under four years of age.

It seems natural to use the emotionally charged space of the classroom as theatre space, and yet the experience of art in this well-known everyday space represents a particular challenge for writers and theatre artists.

The children’s and young people’s theatre festival Augenblick mal! will bring together over 200 theatre experts from around the world and show twelve productions that make a striking use of the body.

In 1989, an institution was founded that is one of a kind worldwide:  the Children’s and Young People’s Theatre Centre in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Since 1989, every year in the time before Christmas, the Frankfurt Authors Forum for Children’s and Young People’s Theatre takes place.

Within a year of the release of Wolfgang Herrndorf’s novel about youth, its theatre adaptation has become the most frequently performed young people’s play on German-language stages.

The 12th edition of the festival “Augenblick mal!” (i.e., Wait a Minute!) looked very grown-up and at the cutting edge.

In November 2012, the Second Symposium on Contemporary Music Theatre for Children brought together about one hundred professionals.

Departments for young people’s opera have now become de rigueur in nearly every opera house.

Since 2007 the the youth magazine Junge Bühne has appeared annually. Free and evidently read with pleasure.