1. Bernd Ruping/Committee for Children and Youth Theatre (AITA-IATA)
„Challenging Theatre Project” (CTP) –
Young People´s International Theatre Camp
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Its place in the work of the Committee-/Aita-structure:
The committee puts its philosophy, ideas, aims and methodical
thoughts concerning the children and youth theatre into concrete terms
basically along the following activities:
a) World Festival of Children´s Theatre (Lingen/world)
- topic: traditions, philosophy, aims and methods reflected
through artificial performances
- presented by international children´s theatre groups
b) International Congress “Drama In Education” (Austria)
- topic: traditions, philosophy, aims and methods reflected
through the practical work (as a rule in the shape of a
multiplicator´s workshop) and its theoretical background
- presented by specialists, dramateachers, theatrepedagogues
• To challenge “theatre” as a traditional but continously changing
communicative medium, which unites artistical activity with human
development,
• to include the youth as a powerful theatre-creating proof of this
process and, last not least,
• to link the amateurtheatre-field with the academic accesses to
theatre, drama and education -
we suggest - as a third column and complementing the Ederet-
encounters -
c) the „Challenging Theatre Project” (Lingen-Germany & possibly:
Brno-Czech Republic, Wasa-Finnland, Klaipeda-Lithuania)
- topic: experimental theatrical processes as processes of
exchange to re-develop traditions, philosophies, aims and
methods of theatre;
- presented by young people from different countries and
languages

2. 2
Structuring ideas:
a) Young people in the age of 16 to 29 meet in summer for an in-
ternational theatre camp or festival fitted out with the eagerness
to share and challenge theatre, whatever the theme or topic or
subject may be;
b) fascilitators of the theatrical/artistic process are young people of
more or less the same age, who study theatrepedagogy in the
cooperating universities such as Lingen, Brno, Wasa and
Lithuania;
their task is: not to teach special forms or technics or genres of
theatre, but to create an empty space, a playground, a
communicative vacuum, in which all the participants – incl. the
students themselves – renew their practical knowledge of what
theatre is all about - by facing and shaping and bringing into
forms whatever might move and interest the young people.
Their preparation is aimed at the creating of a space and an
atmosphere in which all and everything is changeable into a
theatrical process – that is: fascilitating in its best sence.
c) In a third, so to say: surrounding circle, the well-experienced
“old” drama teachers or theatre pedagogues and University-
colleagues follow these processes with curiosity, respect and the
willingness to give value and strongness and impotance to
whatever comes out of the work of the young people; and – of
course – whenever they are asked they are ready to give answers,
which could help the progess to go forward;
main task of this circle however is: to research, re-think and hold
in high esteem the working procedurs of the acting people.
This also means: to link the process with the theatre traditions
and philosophies as far as possible – to historicise it.
If the people who are busy with carefully and actively spectating
the processes want to interfere by own impulses, they´re only
allowed to do it in an indirect way. That means: by placing
material into the playground such like: clothes on the ground,
sentences on a wallpaper, music in the tape-recorder, photos on
the wall etc.

3. 3
The philosophy (between pedagogics and art):
The idea of this “environment” is based on one fundamental objective
(“learning target”): not to bring up somebody to something, but bring
up somebody in something.
Material of this conception of education is the whole world, life in all
its ways and expressions. What forms the boundery of this boundless
variety and what concretely creates the learning platform is theatre as
an unique, polyvalent artform: it places the rules and rituals and
working methods at the disposal of every participant.
Thus theatre creates the “empty space” in which each and every theme
or topic or element of life becomes a malleable raw material for
human development, represented by the performances of the young
people.
And this is, what this idea is all about:
Challenging human development by challenging theatre.
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Timetable
We suggest to start this project as an inner part of the 1st World
Festival of Youth Theatre, which will take place in Vienna, July 2009;
There will be an international evaluation conference afterwards, if
possibly in context of the selection meeting for the 11th World Festival
of Children´s Theatre in Lingen/Germany, 15th-18th of October.
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Partners
- Committee for Children & Youth Theatre of the AITA/IATA
- Austrian Federal Theatre Association ÖBV
- Institute for Theatre Pedagogy of the University of Applied
Sciences, Osnabrück/Germany
(Ruping, Easter 2009)