Länk produces newly written plays for young theater ensembles.
Through Länk, Riksteatern wants to give young people an understanding of what it's like to work professionally with theater and create opportunities for them to meet professional theater workers. The ambition with Länk is also to strengthen the theater industry and inspire more people to apply to acting schools or to get involved in the Riksteatern locally.
Before each Länk round, which takes place every other year, six prominent playwrights are given the task of writing their own script for young people between 15 and 20 years of age.
Theater education and culture schools have long lacked contemporary drama with urgent themes suitable for larger ensembles of high school age. Due to this, the Riksteatern decided in 2010 to start Länk.
ENGLAND
The National Theatre in London initiated New Connections in 1993 by commissioning a number of plays for young theatre companies. These commissions were given to major British playwrights, both established names and writers making waves in reputed new writing theatres. Now, simply called Connections, the project involves over 220 ensembles bringing work to one of 23 regional festivals each year. The closing festival of each cycle is held at the National and features one outstanding production of each of the ten commissioned plays.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/connections
NORWAY
Det Norske Teatret in Oslo has hosted Den Unge Scenen, the Norwegian Connections project since2004. Festivals are presented every other year. Twelve regional festivals will be held in 2013 featuring close to 90 participating companies.
FINLAND
Nuori Näyttämö or The Young Stage produced a pilot Connections project in 2013 with festivals and performances in 2015. The Project was successful and the organization is now in the process of commissioning four new plays and scheduling festivals to take place in 2018. Nuori Näyttämö 2018 will conclude in a national festival co-inciding with Finlands main Theatre festival, Tampere 2018.
PORTUGAL
Culturgest in Lisbon organizes PANOS, a Connections project that has taken place every year since 2006. The festival usually takes place in May and young companies present both new original works by Portuguese playwrights and translations of plays from the National Theatre Connections canon.
http://www.culturgest.pt/panos
BRASIL
The Brazilian version was called Conexões Teatro Jovem and ran from 2006 to 2020 in São Paulo. During those years theatre ensembles from public and private schools as well as independent groups had the chance to choose one play to produce and bring to the festival at the end of the year. Every portfolio offered two commissioned plays by Brazilian playwrights and two from Connections which were published in a bilingual edition English/ Portuguese. The project created an extraordinary chance for young people from very different economic, social and cultural backgrounds to meet through an artistic language. A new version of Conexões is on the horizon and waiting for sponsors to support a very important cultural/educational/social project in Brazil. Read more
INDIA
Connections India started in 2022 by the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai. The project reaches out to both private and public schools and connects them with a professional director that works with them on the plays and in the end performs at the annual festival in January. In 2024, the NCPA is celebrating is third year of running Connections with sixteen schools from all over Mumbai participating. By 2025 the goal is to reach out to three cities in India, growing out to more cities each year. Most of the scripts that are showcased during the festival are from the National Theatre Connections catalogues, usually translated or adapted to an Indian context. From 2024, Connections India has begun to commission Indian playwrights to expand the script offerings to the schools.
For more information about Länk and about international Connections, please feel free to contact the project director, Katinka Richter.
Katinka Richter
katinka.richter@riksteatern.se
tel. +46 70 3881007
