Raised Curtain

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Today Yew Tree Youth Theatre did one of their bravest things yet…they performed in an alternative performance event at Wakefield Theatre brilliantly titled “Raised Curtain” no prizes for guessing I came up with the title…ha…

It was brave in a number of ways…the main one was that it was impossible to rehearse in full…we could rehearse elements of it…sections…but as an entire thing that was impossible. It was brave because a lot of it was improvised, it was brave because rather than repeat the same thing twice for the two shows we decided to do entirely different scenes in each…and it was brave because at no point did we use a stage for our performances but explored site specific work.

The rewards for being brave were many and wonderful to behold. But in order to reap them...we had to endure some awkward moments. In the first performance, there were uncertainties, uncomfortable pauses…times when performers really weren’t sure what to do…there were obviously some brilliant moments too…see below for more details of these

The brilliant thing was how quickly this was responded to…and this is possibly the thing that makes me proudest of my Youth Theatre…in between the two performances we took on board the feedback from our brilliant front of house associates and from Nat, we amalgamated these with our own instincts and acted upon them ensuring that the second performance built on the strong foundations of the first…that takes humility, courage and the desire to create something brilliant…

So things I will never forget from today…the confidence and bravery of the welcoming committee, the comic timing of Ash and Inci…so very good and so daring... the personalities of the tour guide characters…Alice’s engaging and down to earth belligerence, Aayushi’s quick thinking and ghost story telling and Harry and Laura’s excited naivety – obviously this was enhanced further by Harry’s opening speech and his Britney singing…The intimacy and desperation of the dressing room scenes, the improvisation enhancement of the 3pm bar scene and the intensity and impact of the 5pm one, the hilarity and observational humour captured by the box office scenes…the playfulness of the maze scenes and the good feeling engendered when people joined in with this playfulness and the absurdist, gentle but eloquent anarchy of arco’s performance…

I will also remember what a privilege it was to work in partnership with such talented and inspirational individuals and organisations…so members of Yew Tree Youth Theatre, The Hepworth Gallery Wakefield and Wakefield Theatre Royal I salute you for a great first partnership event…and…please can we do another…

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