Children’s theatre award

After 20 years of successful collaboration, the joint biennial competition for the development of new children’s plays organized by Berlin’s GRIPS Theater and the energy services provider GASAG is entering a new era. Five playwrights (four individual playwrights and one writing duo) will be supported throughout the play development process—including two intensive workshops—with the dramaturgical and theater education resources of the GRIPS Theater. Another pillar of the initiative is the expanded participation of children and young people. All of the winning plays produced in the 10 editions of the collaboration to date have been staged at the GRIPS Theater, and four of these productions were invited to the Mülheim Children’s Play Prize. With this relaunch, GRIPS and GASAG aim to amplify children’s voices in theater while simultaneously underscoring the relevance of professional dramatic texts in theater for young audiences. 

We look forward to collaborating with 

Sophie Blomen & Max Reiniger Sophie Blomen (theater and festival producer, studied performing arts in Hildesheim, artistic director of the 2018 transeuropa Festival) and Max Reiniger (director, also part of the artistic direction of transeuropa 2018, productions at Schauspiel Hannover and Ballhaus Ost Berlin, among others) have been writing together for several years. Their play *SUPA HELL* was awarded the German Children’s and Youth Theater Prize.

Jara Nassar is a queer German-Lebanese writer, performer, and poet who writes in German and English interwoven with Lebanese Arabic. Her play “Hoch und immer Höher” is nominated for the Heidelberg Stückemarkt Authors’ Prize; her first world premiere, “Baba Dein Herz,” took place in 2025.

Simone Saftig is an author, literary scholar, and cultural journalist. In 2024, she received the “Nah dran!” fellowship for “herzkopfüber”; her debut, “Modern Mermates,” won the Textflimmern Prize at Theater Kiel. She is a resident writer for the 2025–26 season at the Deutsches Theater Berlin and is purs

Chantal-Fleur Sandjon is an Afro-German author, editor, and spoken-word artist. She is particularly interested in the multifaceted and poetic portrayal of queer Black experiences in Germany. Her young adult novel in verse, *Die Sonne, so strahlend und Schwarz* (Thienemann, 2022), was awarded the German Youth Literature Prize, the Kranichstein Youth Literature Fellowship, and the Vielfalter Prize, among others, in 2023.