Open Call to Young Writers- Send Your Puppet Theater Scripts to UNIMA

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Deadline: April 15, 2018

2019 marks the 90th Anniversary of the creation of UNIMA. To honour this date, UNIMA is holding an open competition for young writers aged 18-35 interested in authoring a script or concept for puppet theater. The script will be performed as part of the UNIMA 90th Anniversary celebrations.

UNIMA is in search of a special script/concept for the puppet theater. This creation will be workshopped into four distinct productions that will be performed in four separate geographical regions of the world: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas.

Authors are asked to use as theme, subject matter, point of departure, or inspiration for their work the values that UNIMA has sought to uphold throughout its almost 90-year-long history: namely, international friendship and a spirit of openness and cooperation across borders, social, cultural and religious affiliations or partisan beliefs.

The foundation of UNIMA in 1929 took place a decade after the devastations of World War I in a spirit of reconstruction between a Frenchman, Paul Jeanne, and a Czech, Jindřich Veselý. Twenty-eight years later, in 1957, and again in Prague, the first post-World War II UNIMA Congress elected its Presidium (now known as the UNIMA Executive Committee). The German-born Max Jacob was appointed UNIMA’s president and his two vice presidents were the Soviet, Sergei Obraztsov (a former combatant in the war) and the Italian, Vittorio Podrecca (an anti-fascist). The Frenchman, Jean-Loup Temporal, who also fought in the war, would also become a member of the executive branch of UNIMA along with other committed international members of the organization.

These foundational moments in UNIMA’s history are open to your individual interpretation. The stories and themes they evoke can be adapted to any period and to any historical or fictional characters. Keep in mind as you conceive your play/concept that we also wish to promote both UNIMA’s core values as well as the puppetry arts.

The selected author will receive an award of 2,000 euros.

The awardee will also have the opportunity to have his/her script or concept performed, as described above, forming the basis for four productions that will be presented in an international network.

More information can be found here.