What's happening at YTYT

Firstly in the interests of honesty I feel I must say that the original inspiration for this blog wasn’t actually found in a Yew Tree session at all but in one of the classes I take for the West Yorkshire Theatre Dance School. The WYTDS includes the youngest group I direct on a regular basis and there are, in fact, occasions where I forget just how little they are…one of them was proudly announcing her imminent 7th birthday yesterday… At present we’re workshopping the brilliant, “We’re going on a bear hunt,” and already the groups interpretation of it is pricelessly funny and adorably cute…however despite these worthy and distracting attributes last night I started to notice something quite fascinating… Firstly some useful information…with a piece like this you run a little bit a considerable amount of times…layering up the ideas and the familiarity and the confidence until the ability to tell the story is enhanced and the words etc are embedded. So in the course of a workshop you se

Not hard to guess the blogger of the week...he has a certain tone... Well. What an absolute pleasure of a session. Ohhhhh no. What's this... Yew tree has been taken over. Ooooh yeah, but not to worry, it's in the more than capable hands of the youth theatre. It was suuuuch a good session. N 'without a doubt' trout starting things off, facilitating best and worst with an absolute certainty about direct-ness about it. Joanna rock Joanna roll, boom, straight into magic box with such enthusiasm and joyfullness. Dee and Pee, going for a risky option but absolutely pulling it off due to muchos prep-os. The gumatron leading her favourite game,the 2p game, explained shortly, sharply and structuredly! Aaron D and Callum T charismatically running the freezy framey, film, book and song game. Putting a new cheeky twist on it, makin it there own and delivering in a humourous yet direct way. Girg and tommy nizz ploughing out and monster of a final task, inspiring many a good performa

About 6 weeks ago when Danny and I sat down to plan the terms work with Gold Company we decided that the 22nd of May would be about all things site specific - taking advantage of the vast terrain of Thornes Park that we have at our disposal. At that point all we could do was hope that the weather would be ok…imagine my happiness when I woke up to possibly the sun shiniest day of the year. It’s more than lovely when a spark of inspiration gets fed by happy chance and the right kind of environment and turns into something brilliant…but essentially that’s what happened with our plans for today… Today’s site specific adventures inspired musings on the subject of devising and what makes the process go smoothly and what makes it go less smoothly. At it’s best devising is a lot like the process outlined above…you start with the frame…whether that be words, sounds, sights, memories, anything really…then you’re looking for that spark of creative inspiration and then with a mixture of the righ

Alice's reflection on Gold Company's session So today I woke up and the weather was yet again beautiful so I put a dress on...but then I thought dayummm probs gonna get a ‘that’s not practical’ look from Sarah; but I got over it quickly and kept it on ha. Turns out there were several dress wearers... So today we did site specific performances and they were brilliant. It meant we got to work in the beautiful sunshine if we so wished and left Aaron, Chelsie and Jack to create something in our usual room in the shade. When we normally arrive to Thornes on a Saturday morning there is nearly always a new object or change in the room that we have to hide, push to the side, dispose of or accommodate. Today there were no chairs and a random gravestone in the corner to contend with. Butttt, what occurred to me with site specific theatre is that you don’t have to question any of it...like the thing I loved about watching the other groups was that I found myself not having to ignore anyth

Today I write the blog while a session is happening which is weird…but Daniel Walker from Performing Earth is taking the gold company session so I get to watch my youth theatre work with someone else…I thought I’d use this to my advantage and write a live blog… So we’ve done some walking around stuff and now we’re playing King of the Jungle…or Animal Kingdom…a game might I add than Jonny volunteered for treacherous little so and so… This moves onto acting techniques…specifically physicality and the importance of understanding your own before you can think about that of your character…so each member of the gold company is confronted with a number of interpretive snapshots of their walk which turns out to be more of a surprise to some than others… After the break Daniel introduces the concept of, “Performance Playground” something he has picked up in his international work in South Korea. With this the Gold Company are first asked to get rid of their need to plan, intellectualise and mo

Ellie Moran boys and girls...again...so yay for that... I choose to write the blog for this week’s sessions because it's made me really happy with what’s gone on, and well because it’s for yew tree init … First of all ... I joined Thursday group (Black Company) which is really really nice because I’ve been at Yew Tree for such a long time now and I feel like I worked my way up the sessions all the way to the top ... and I've reached it. We’re starting on the Shakespeare festival too which is something I’ve never had the chance to do before so that’s really nice. This week was my second week there and I feel like I’m going home rather than to a Yew Tree session on a night time... Also this week we had somebody called Daniel come in from "Performing Earth," he told us some of the stuff he did around the world and after that I was smiling through the whole session. It was so inspiring to be in a workshop with somebody that has been all over and experienced it all. As so

There’s a general assumption in some quarters that acting isn’t necessarily a thoughtful thing…that it’s all about instinct and action and although both of those things are important aspects this morning’s Gold company workshop raised the importance of reflection and the need to consider what elements are at play… We set up a real time improvisation, a cast of characters to take part in it and then pretty much let it run…adding in catalysts and signposts as it went. As a formula for workshops and actor training it’s hardly new but despite this it does require a standard of engagement from a reasonably experienced set of actors if only so that they stay in role as consistently as possible throughout the improvisation. Gold company managed this well, as I had faith that they would…and as it closed we had the usual quality of initial responsive discussion displayed by this vibrant company…including input from some people that don’t always feel confident to take part (you have to ask if t

Amy Walton from Gold Company is our guest blogger for today so Hurray for her! Well today we had Yew Tree and i must say it felt a long time since we did, "Best and Worst," I missed them times. But anyway after, "Best and Worst," we did a few games, one included us all acting like zombies and trying to attack the 'survivor', it was quite fun I do have to say. The main task today was a big improvisation and i mean big. All of us individually had to create a character in sixth form this, character was going on a school trip to South Wales. After creating the characters, students or teachers we started to board the coach. We then arrived at the centre after what felt a long time. We were them met by a man called Luke Short the centre manager (by the way this task didn't just take place within the indoors we took it to another extreme and did it inside and outside) we had to find a place in which we would camp with nature and then had to tell him which mater

Callum with his late entry to the Kendal Blog... KENDAL!!! It's hard to explain what it means to me to have gone back to Kendal Brewery Arts Centre for my last connections. Especially considering it's almost exactly two years since I went their for my first connections. It was an even bigger deal considering their was also a performance of "Vampire Story," being performed that weekend. "Vampire Story," being the very play I performed for that very same occasion. So getting there my head was already overloaded with memories and nostalgia from the time I was there two years before. I couldn't have been happier to be back, almost like going home after a long trip away. We were shown to the malt room and was over the moon to be with people who are almost like a second family to me as well as actual family in the form of my brother. None of this however came close to the feeling that I got walking back into that theatre. It is such a happy place for me. After

There are rare occasions when I feel driven to write the blog about an individual and this is one of them…one of my most nervous hours of being a director was spent last night at The Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal in anticipation of Hannah’s performance of Karamazoo. Indeed a number of times Danny and I compared notes on just how sick we felt with nerves…We weren’t nervous because we didn’t think she could do it because we knew she could. I realized I was nervous because I had been responsible for giving her the most enormous challenge and she had to go out in front of a full house of about 300 people and meet it…don’t know why I bothered though…being nervous that is…she was truly inspiring…from the outset she had the audience absolutely with her…and she held them for the entirety of the performance. This performance was fuelled by integrity, truth, understanding and was realized through an intelligent, thoughtful approach to telling the story of a character who’s story needed to be

This week nearly everyone who went to Kendal has contributed something to the blog...so here you are... So it’s my first Kendal experience, and it’s been absolutely magic. It sort of feels like time has stopped and we just get to spend a weekend in a gorgeous place with some of the best people, sort of surreal, but the best kind of surreal. Sparkleshark has been immense, tho I’m sad it’s all over, it couldn’t have been better :) Jess H As I wasn’t part of either cast I had the opportunity to watch both casts develop, they were both so different but both so amazing. My favourite part of Sparkleshark and Karamazoo has been the performances because even though both casts have been working hard on theirs for 4 months we still get to see every actor make new discoveries about their characters. Sharkleshark has been such a great process to be a part of but I personally think that is not just because the play is brill but because the directing and acting (from both casts) has been phenomenal.