Northland Artist attends Next Generation Theatre for Young People Residency in Mongolia

Kelly Gilbride reports back on a life-changing trip to Mongolia.
Thanks to funding from Creative Northland, PAYPA and ASSITEJ.

In April I was one of fourteen participants to take part in ASSITEJ’s Next Generation Theatre for Young People residency. Each year the Next Gen pops up in a different country around the world. In 2026 it was in Mongolia, a country I had never thought I would ever visit - and I’m so glad I did. I spent an amazing two weeks with theatre makers from Mongolia, Australia, Nepal, Indonesia, Vietnam, Keyna, and America. Alongside the residency was an international traveling theatre festival called Wanderlust, that saw shows from Nepal, Indonesia, France, Sweden, Italy, Mongolia and more. Many of these shows were for very young audiences, were non-verbal and those that were spoken transcended any language barrier. There’s nothing quite like going to a primary school and watching kids, many for the first time, experience a mime show from Italy or a truly chaotic two-hander from Sweden involving a violin and a coat.

During our time there we toured around Orkhon and Bulgan Provinces in old buses and soviet style vans. The countryside is vast, mountainous and being in it feels like sitting with a really old elder, full of history you catch glimpses of but can never fully know. There’s no roads or signs, just black tire marks that lie like spaghetti in every direction. We traveled hundreds of kilometres over the two weeks, to different sums (think small, small villages), slept on kindergarten floors, in school halls and empty retirement homes and once in an accountant's office. Somehow around all that travel, we made some theatre.

I learnt a lot of things I would love to share - but for the sake of brevity I’ll pick one! I learnt that storytelling, and working together to figure out how to tell that story, is not bound by words. I had the most amazing time devising these wonderful short pieces with people from all around the world, with different approaches, and some of us couldn’t speak the same language, so we used our bodies instead. With atmospheric music, hand gestures and alert eyes, we created a devised show that took audiences on a journey to multiple spaces around the theatre.

While I was away, I was reminded of something so important - there is kindness and curiosity everywhere in this world. From airport terminals, to bathroom lines, to vodka with Mongolian farmers, to high fives at every school you visit, to tiny kindergartens far from home and back again.  

Thanks to Performing Arts & Young People Aotearoa for supporting my trip.