-
The incredibly valuable and valued Gemma Whelan...with a lovely blog that echos the thoughts of the Yew Tree artists as we get ready to start the term...

So the last year has been put to bed and the new one has begun, and it’s full of promise, opportunity and youth theatre, and so we begin the joyous journey that rockets through the rollercoaster of the next 12 months, with highs, lows and moments of complete bewilderment when I look at the people around me and I say who am I and why am I here? But would I get off? Nah! not for all the tea in china.

Also I have a grand master plan for what I what I would like to explore this next year, which I can’t completely divulge because if I did I would…..have…to…..stick to it, which is a dangerous place for a practitioner to be, as we need to be flexible when we’re exploring young peoples imagination and realms of their confidence.
I can tell you though that there will be a appearance of King Lear, chunks of slow motion action from The Tempest. Lots of lovely site specific writing, and a cameo from a dragon called Puff.

And when December 2010 races around the corner and there a lots of moments of ‘Just get through the next performance, only 5 more to go’ and ‘Sorry rob I left the registers’ at home’ and we’re on the home stretch with tinsel in our hair, I’ll find it hard to remember what the reasons are for what we do within the youth theatre, but I will have stopped thinking and started feeling it and have moments of complete connectivity with the journey, which is the reason I always get back on the youth theatre ride.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chloe's Leavers Blog - finally :)

-
  Please excuse how this was written, I do a very silly drama school course, and I haven’t had to write more than my name in 9 months. I’m sat in my silly dorm bed writing me this on my DSA laptop (a win for the mentally ill girlies), realising how utterly bad my ability to Words has become. Anyway.. Leaving YTYT was one of the oddest experiences of my life, and yet, I don’t remember it at all. I’d spent the last few years, waving off some of my closest friends as they went on to conquer their dreams, in a tearful circle, yet all I have is a fuzzy memory and a video saved in an instagram highlight. I’d sell a kidney to try and bring back that experience, to do my final show unclouded by new medication and intrusive thoughts, but as that isn’t possible, I thought I’d finally write my leavers blog, even if it is a year late. I started Yew Tree in 2017, as a way to explore drama outside of the agonising GCSE setting, and across the years, it became a lifeline for me, providing confidence,
Read more

Arwen's Leavers blog

-
I made a start writing this leaver’s blog when I was on a bloody needed holiday over a month ago, on the glorious Isle of Islay in Scotland. I’m re-writing it now, because I think it was naff to be honest. And I’m not in the same mindset as I was then. Also I might have had a few too many drams of whisky whilst writing it there, so there’s that. A line I’ll keep from it however is: “How am I meant to do justice and summarise in my writing the enormity of an impact that Yewtree has had on me these last 5-ish years?” How can I articulate all the skills that I've learnt and developed? The experiences I’ve had? There’s so much, where and what do I start on? So I’ll do just that, and put some of the skills I’ve learnt into use: “You can’t be a creative, a critic, and an editor at the same time” But in fairness - I don’t think I could share and articulate all those things. And I’m not sure that I want to, they’re for me. I can’t put that expectation on myself. The past year I’ve felt as
Read more

Celebrating the past in the present...

-
  Next year Yew Tree Youth Theatre will be 30 years old.   We haven’t quite decided how we will celebrate - any suggestions would be gratefully received. No doubt there will be some nostalgic perambulating down memory lane and some haphazard but joyous celebrating of three decades of creativity we have shared.   Some variation of those two themes would feel fitting. This blog however is something different. This blog is a celebration of the present of those who attended YTYT in the past. Alumni, graduates, previous members – I can never seem to find the right term – but whatever word is chosen I know for sure they are part of the fabric of the youth theatre and I’m grateful to have known all of them, mainly because I have learnt so much from them.   I also can’t put a number on how many people have spent significant time with YTYT over the last 29 years.   I know we started with a group of 8 and now have about 80 members, I know at our peak just before COVID we had about 130 young pe
Read more