KIM PETER KOVAC, PRODUCING DIRECTOR OF KENNEDY CENTER THEATER FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES, USA

Kim Peter Kovac is Producing Director of Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, which commissions, produces, and presents. At the Center, he has served as producer of over fifty new plays, operas, and dances and co-founded New Visions/New Voices, which has assisted in the development of 88 new plays, musicals, and operas from 78 playwrights and 35 composers, working with 57 U.S. and 8 international theater companies.

He was a State Department/Arts America Fellow to Amman, Jordan, teaching a four-week seminar in theatrical design to professional directors and designers. In recent years he has spoken at many international symposia: on TYA and school systems (Vienna); on international networking (Amman, Jordan and Adelaide,); on playwriting for young audiences (Tokyo and Okinawa City); and on cultural diversity in TYA (Bursa, Turkey and Adelaide). He was also invited by the Japanese league of producers of theater for children and young people to conduct seminars on the international landscape of the field, community engagement, and acting, and was keynote speaker at ‘TYA: A Gathering’ in Cork, Ireland. In the US, he taught seminars on ‘The Business of New Play Development’ and ‘International TYA’ at the U of Central Florida, where he is a Graduate Faculty Scholar, and was recently a guest artist at U Texas at Austin.

Since 2002, he has been on the governing board of ASSITEJ, the international association of theaters for young people and families, and is currently serving his second term as VP. Since 1998, he has been on the board of Theater for Young Audiences/USA, and was president from 2004-2008, and was on the board of IPAY, international Performing Arts for Youth, from 2010-2013.

In May 2011 he co-founded ‘Write Local. Play Global’, an international network for playwrights for young audiences, which presently has over 450 members in 56 countries.

In 2008, both) IPAY and AATE, the American Alliance for Theater in Education honored him for long-time distinguished service to the field.

He has an MFA in directing from the University of Texas at Austin.

YVETTE HARDIE, PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL ASSITEJ, SOUTH AFRICA

YVETTE HARDIE is a theatre producer, director, educator, and writer active in the world of theatre and performance, with a particular focus on theatre for young audiences. She
initiated the launch of ASSITEJ SA in 2007, and leads the organisation in the capacity of National Director. She currently serves as President of the international ASSITEJ (2011-2014), which is a network of artists and practitioners working in theatre for young audiences in over 85 countries. She served as Treasurer for the organisation from 2008-2011.

She has been the Festival Director of the Out The Box Festival of Puppetry and Visual Performance 2011, having also served as Family Festival Curator for previous editions.

She produced the award-winning Colonnades Lab production, Truth in Translation, which has been seen by over 55 000 people worldwide, and sits on the board of the Global Arts Corps, which uses the arts for social transformation and conflict resolution.

She is currently producing international tours of Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother featuring Thembi Mtshali-Jones, toured in 2012 to Bermuda, the Edinburgh Festival and Afrovibes in the UK and Netherlands.

As a director, recent projects include Suzanne Lebeau’s The Ogreling and Mike van Graan’s Is it because I’m Jack? She also serves as Deputy Chairperson of Arterial Network SA.

She is valued for her work in Arts Education, having served as Head of Department at the National School of the Arts, written national curricula for Dramatic and Creative Arts and textbooks for Via Afrika in the same subjects for Grades 4-12. She has an MTech in Voice and Movement Studies from the Tshwane University of Technology.

MODERATED BY

JENN HARTMANN LUCK, EDUCATION & OUTREACH DIRECTOR, PARAMOUNT THEATRE, AUSTIN, TX

Jenn Hartmann Luck is the Education & Outreach Director at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, TX. For the past fifteen years she has taught theatre professionally in Arizona, New York City, Los Angeles, and Austin. She has worked with Phoenix Theatre, Arizona Jewish Theatre Company, The Herberger Theatre Center, Biz Kids NY, The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Kids on Stage CA, Azusa Pacific University, and she spent three years in the Education Department at Center Theatre Group/The Mark Taper Forum. She taught undergraduate acting and voice courses at UT Austin, as well as the “Performance of Persuasion” at the UT School of Law. Jenn is also a singer/songwriter, composer, director, actor, and lover of all things TYA. In 2009 she was named a Don and Elizabeth Doyle Fellow, recognized for her artistic ability in the area of Theatre for Youth. She received her BA in Theatre from Arizona State University MFA in Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities from the University of Texas at Austin.