Sessions
Exploring the Landscape of Development of New Plays for Young Audiences
1:00 PM - 1:50 PM Fri
Tips and Tricks for Playwrights to finesse the Producer-Playwright Two-Step
2:00 PM - 2:50 PM Fri
Readings of the Region III Planet Earth & Full–Length Play Awards: MOTHER OF TWO by Emma Kiel and THE SIX-FINGERED WOMAN by Sophie McIntosh
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Sat
Kim Peter Kovac works nationally and internationally in theater for young audiences and theater education, with a focus on new play development and networking.
He was at the Kennedy Center for 35 years, most recently as Artistic Director of Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences and Artistic Advisor at Large, Performances for Young Audiences.
At the Center, he served as producer or line producer of over 100 commissioned world premiere productions of new plays, operas and dances for young audiences produced by the Center from emerging and established artists including Jason Robert Brown, Michael Friedman, Idris Goodwin, Lauren Gunderson, Sheldon Harnick, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Paige Hernandez, Naomi Iizuka, Marsha Norman, Aaron Posner, Marco Ramirez, Mo Willems, Jacqueline Woodson, and Karen Zacarías.
He continues as co-founding director of the Center’s New Visions/New Voices, which, from 1991-2018, assisted in the development of 119 new plays, musicals, and operas from 102 playwrights and 39 composers working with 64 U.S. and 12 international theater companies, a program which has had significant impact on the field nationally and internationally. In 2016, New Visions/New Voices: 25 years/25 plays was published by Dramatic Publishing, co-edited with fellow NV/NV co-founding director Deirdre Kelly Lavrakas, and in 2018, they were awarded the first-ever Harold Oaks Award for Sustained Excellence by Theatre for Young Audiences/USA.
He has conducted workshops, seminars, and symposia in Amman, Jordan; Vienna and Linz, Austria; Berlin; Tokyo; New Delhi; Warsaw; Copenhagen; Baku, Azerbaijan; Bursa, Turkey; Cork, Ireland; Adelaide; Cape Town; as well as at the University of Texas at Austin, Northwestern University, NYU, the University of Maryland, and the University of Central Florida.
From 2002-2014, he was on the governing board of ASSITEJ, the international association of theaters for young audiences, including two terms as Vice-President. From 1998-2017, he was on the board of Theater for Young Audiences/USA, including being president from 2004-2008. In 2011 he co-founded ‘Write Local. Play Global’, an international network for playwrights for young audiences, which presently has 650+ members in 64+ countries.
He has published over 150 pieces of poetry, flash fiction, and creative non-fiction in print and on line in journals from nine countries.
He holds an MFA in directing from the University of Texas at Austin, with minors in lighting design, scenic design, and history/criticism and in 2017 was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.