Cyprus Theatre Organisation

16.1.2023

Young Europe IV has won the Art Explora – Académie des Beaux-Arts European award!

Theatre Development / News

Cyprus Theatre Organisation is pleased to announce that the Young Europe IV programme in which it participates has won the Art Explora – Académie des Beaux-Arts European award!

Young Europe IV is elected winner in its category, among 150 applicants and 6 finalists, for its innovation in access to culture, and rewarded with a €50,000 prize!

Young Europe IV aims to transform European classrooms into theatres for the duration of a play -- and change the sorts of stories we tell about people from non-dominant backgrounds.

The ETC project brings 9 theatres from 7 countries together to co-create plays that come alive for young people and transcend national, cultural and even language barriers.

This edition focuses on the non-dominant voices in our societies as a challenge to the dominance of the white, heterosexual, male perspective in European theatre literature.

Each participating theatre is working with an emerging playwright, who will share their 'diverse' story through plays that will be performed in school classrooms from the UK to Cyprus. The process is supported and guided by established European theatre mentors.

This highly-prestigious award will enable ETC to transform the reach of Young Europe IV and create a diverse theatre canon for young audiences across the continent, through translations and the organisation of a dedicated theatre festival in 2024.

It is essential to mention that THOC has been participating in the Young Europe programme since its first establishment, since Mrs Marina Maleni – THOC’s Theatre Development Officer – was part of the team that in 2009 has created the first of four successful versions of the programme, funded by the European Union and aimed to develop the writing and staging of plays for teenagers.

Through the project the idea of Classroom Play was introduced in Cyprus and a number of plays that emerged from the project were staged and travelled to schools, such as Heads Tails by Katja Hensel, Narcofield by Pamela Dur, My Mother Medea by Holger Shomber, as well as the play Kali-Kandjar and Co by Lea Maleni, Christina Constantinou and Valentinos Kokkinou.  Thanks to this project, the Cypriot goblins of the engraver Hampis travelled to schools in Hungary and became the occasion for a play written and performed there.

The human right of young people to participation and express opinions on anything that concerns them, and in this case on the themes and the writing process of teenage plays, played a central role in the planning of the programme from the very beginning.

In the current version of the programme, Young Europe IV, which focuses on non-dominant voices, the Cypriot writer Zoe Apostolidou and, on behalf of THOC, the dramaturgs Marina Maleni and Kiki Argyrou participate.

Learn more about Young Europe IV