Amsterdam, Netherlands

BYE BYE: Nearly two decades old, the Dutch theatre collective Dood Paard tours frequently. It is perhaps best known worldwide for MedEia, in which three actors retell the story of one of literature's most famous scorned women from the point of view of the chorus, which does not (or cannot) intervene. That play is still in Dood Paard's repertoire (next month it goes to the TUPP Festival in Sweden), and another piece travels next month to New York's Guggenheim Museum (an English-language version of REIGEN ad lib, based on Arthur Schnitzler's sex-obsessed play Hands Around, April 28–30). A third, Answer Me, visits Portugal in May.

Meanwhile, in the busy company's hometown of Amsterdam, a brand-new production debuts this month. Bye Bye is the creation of performers Kuno Bakker and Gillis Biesheuvel. Dood Paard has never been big on the fourth wall (or on directors or scenic designers), and audiences can expect to see this aesthetic applied to its interpretation of Othello. A publicity photo shows the actors in blackface, and the company's publicity and education director, Raymond Querido, confirms that race relations are a probable theme of the piece, still in development as this issue went to press: "Kuno and Gillis are focusing on the way Othello relates to the way people from outside Western Europe are portrayed in the media," he says. It's worth pointing out, however, that the strong reaction blackface tends to prompt in U.S. society isn't necessarily the same among the Dutch. (The "Black Peter" character who accompanies St. Nicholas in Dutch Christmas tradition—and who cheerfully cavorts in colorful clothes and dark makeup on TV each year in holiday parades—isn't widely perceived in the Netherlands as offensive, Querido says.) So there's room for a second focus: the way actors interact. Metatheatrically portraying performers who have decided to tackle a two-man version of Shakespeare's play, Bakker and Biesheuvel will explore the elements of competition, petty jealousy, self-absorption and political correctness that arise between them. (Mar. 1–Apr. 2; (31) 20–421–4990; www.doodpaard.nl)

Venice, Italy

LA BIENNIALE DI VENEZIA: Since last October, if Venetian theatregoers have kept their eyes peeled, opportunities for celebrity encounters have been rife. A parade of daring contemporary directors has passed through the canal-threaded city: Romeo Castellucci, Rodrigo García, Jan Lauwers, Ricardo Bartís, Thomas Ostermeier, Calixto Bieito. And theatre-geeks-about-town this month can hope to find themselves at the espresso counter next to Flemish auteur Jan Fabre. While the main public event of the Bienniale's theatre program, the International Festival of Theatre, is still half a year away, the heart of its activities is the creative encounter among artists at the International Workshop of Performing Arts, now coming to a close.

The Catalan head of the Bienniale, Àlex Rigola, gave each of these directors approximately a week, a group of some 20 performers, and space inside one of two restored venues at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale and the Sala delle Colonne di Ca' Giustinian. According to Rigola, the flexibility of these spaces, newly liberated from their proscenium configuration, is a must for the creation of contemporary theatre. As for the high actor headcount, Rigola explains, "These workshops have one principal goal, and that is to give young artists from around the world the chance to see a great artist work and participate in a laboratory with him. Two minutes of conversation can often affect an artist's career more than hundreds of hours of classes."

Fabre takes residence in Ca' Giustinian March 21–25 with outlaws on the brain. "The gangster's transgression stimulates our imagination, while his condemnation is our catharsis," Fabre writes in his pre–workshop notes. On the final day, like his predecessors, he'll meet with the public. Interviews with the directors also appear at www.labiennalechannel.org. The fact that earlier workshops by Bartís and Ostermeier both drew on Hamlet as rough source material is a coincidence, confirms Rigola. ("Or not. The theatre only has one main theme, human relationships, and the best time to observe human beings is in critical moments of conflict, of crisis, of change"—which Hamlet has aplenty.) García, for his part, asked his team to study the Bruegel painting The Triumph of Death and show up with an original text or musical composition in reaction to it. He later commented he was pleasantly surprised at the personal nature of the responses.

All seven workshops will pick up in October during the 41st International Festival of Theatre with a smaller group of hand–picked performers, culminating in 15–minute fragments to be presented in a single evening, collage–style. To focus the presentation, Rigola has proposed the directors contemplate the topic of the Seven Deadly Sins. Another theme, he says, revealed itself to him spontaneously during the first phase of the workshops—that of play, and the importance of that concept particularly to actors. "When you're playing," he says, "it is important to stay alert and know how to react at all times. It doesn't matter what happened seconds ago; you can't dwell on what you've done before; you have to keep playing until the end of the performance." (International Workshop of Performing Arts: Thru Mar. 25; International Festival of Theatre: Oct. 10–16; (3) 41–5218711; www.labiennale.org)

North Adelaide, Australia

COME OUT FESTIVAL: Among this biennial celebration's 65 events are a number of intriguing theatre performances. Tasmania's Terrapin Puppet Theatre and the Children's Art Theatre of China Welfare Institute have collaborated on When the Pictures Came by Finegan Kruckemeyer, directed by Frank Newman, featuring animations by filmmaker Zeng Yigang. Kruckemeyer is a Tasmanian playwright whose The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy won a 2009 Australian Writer's Guild Award and has been performed worldwide. At Come Out audiences can also see Windmill Theatre's production of his Escape from Peligro Island, a choose–your–own–adventure in which the audience uses hand–held controllers to steer the main character's fate.

Vile Child is a music–theatre piece unafraid to explore the dark side of youth, directed for the Dutch company Stella Den Haag by Erma van den Berg and written by Stella's founder, Hans van den Boom. The same company will present a show for school audiences only, starring Van den Berg and written and directed by Van den Boom, Thick-Skinned Things, about a girl so shy she lives underground. "For a piece of theatre to be truly helpful to us it must address our inner concerns, deal with our anxieties—a young audience is no different to an adult audience in this respect," says festival director Andy Packer. "The key element for any young audience, though, is that the work ends with a sense of hope. To show that through the darkness a path to happiness can be found—this message is enormously helpful to teenagers." Packer praises Stella Den Haag's work for this reason: "There is the electricity of truth in the room when they are performing. In addition to this, they incorporate beautiful live music and singing which beguiles their audience. I think the energy that they bring to the stage is the result of considerable emotional dramaturgy in the making of each work."

Also notable is the premiere of Patch Theatre Company's kid-empowering musical Little Green Tractor, set in the aftermath of a bushfire. According to Packer, the work is a synthesis by company leader Dave Brown of three elements: Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" campaign, The Little Engine That Could and similar children's stories, and Brown's discovery of an Adelaide–based rockabilly band. Packer notes, "Australia is a landscape of extremes, be it floods, hurricanes, droughts or bushfires. Dave has beautifully used this elemental reality as the context within which a tale celebrating a united community can be shared." (Mar. 25–Apr. 1; (61) 8 –8267–5766; www.comeout.on.net)

London, England

INTERNATIONAL PLAYWRIGHTS SEASON: The Royal Court Theatre's 15th program of international work will proceed, though touched by loss: One of the festival's playwrights was among those killed Jan. 24 in the suicide bombing in Moscow's airport. Anna Mashutina, pen name Anna Yablonskaya, had landed in Moscow to collect an award for a film adaptation of her play Pagans, about a proselytizing mother and her estranged family. Yablonskaya was in residence at the Royal Court last year to work on another play, Scenes from Family Life. The Ukrainian scribe would have turned 30 this year, and leaves behind about a dozen plays. "Unlike much new Russian writing, Anna's plays were genuinely full of belief that things might just work out," wrote Sasha Dugdale on the Guardian's theatre blog the day after the bombing. "She wrote with warm understanding of the world, and this was precisely how she was in life: a joyous woman, committed and enthusiastic." The Royal Court's Elyse Dodgson has stated she will organize a new project with Ukrainian writers in Yablonskaya's memory.

Pagans receives an April 7 staged reading alongside readings of plays from Belarus, Chile and Mexico, plus full productions of new work from Colombia and Latvia: Our Private Life, by Pedro Miguel Rozo, translated by Simon Scardifield; and Remembrance Day, by Aleksey Scherbak, translated by Rory Mullarkey, who also ushered Yablonskaya's words into English. (Thru Apr. 16; (44) 20–7565–5000; www.royalcourttheatre.com)