What's happening at YTYT

If you can take everything seriously whilst remaining entirely playful… If you can develop certainty and build on what you previously found still retaining a continual sense of discovery… If you can be utterly focused and yet aware of all aspects of the world in which you and the character you are portraying live… If you can remain stress free and yet aware of the responsibilities of being a member of a cast… If you can know the script inside out yet listen to and speak those words as if for the first time… If you can be supportive to each member of your company and keep yourself strong and sane… If you can be truly open and yet retain your privacy and dignity If you can develop the arrogance to know you can do it with the humility to learn from everything and everyone… If you can assess yourself with heartbreaking honesty and put yourself back together stronger than before If you can cherish every single moment and yet yearn for the greater things to come… Then you’ll be a perfect you

Amy Walton volunteered to be our guest blogger this week... So.. here it is my blog, This week had to be one of the slowest weeks ever, it felt like a month had gone past and before it was back round to Yew Tree again and i couldn't have been more happier at seeing everyone there on a saturday morning its great and i love it as always, This saturday we worked on a technique called two touch, in which the lines of the script are one - 3 words. I found it great and really enjoyed working on it. It then came round to Connections times, The Shooting Truth cast focused on creating new scenes and going over other scenes and the ensemble created new scenes also. I really enjoy how its coming along and think the finished production is going to be amazinggggg. So yeah... go on yewtreee.! Amy x

There are times when, despite our best efforts, things don’t go to plan…that despite the time we spend planning creative, rewarding, developmental workshops, things conspire against us and instead of the smooth, seamless fulfilling session we had planned we find ourselves in a challenging situation. Wednesday night was just such a night…Danny had planned the Green Company session carefully, he and I had chatted about the priorities for the group and what we needed and wanted to get done. We arrived at the session looking forward to the workshop to discover that for reasons beyond anybody’s control (a school’s roof collapsing and a home improvement event for the estate the community centre is situated in) we couldn’t have the hall and instead we were banished to an upstairs room that was too small and had rubbiiiissshhh acoustics. It would have been very easy for both ourselves and the Green company to have got annoyed at this point, to have seen the bleak side of the situation and to

Jack Davies ladies and gentlemen WELLL... I am a strange person. Everything new that I happen to experience magically turns into "my favourite thing"....this happens quite a lot. One thing that I genuinely reeeeaaallly enjoy is physical theatre. I know the prospect of an entire saturday morning session devoted to physical theatre is too amazing to imagine...but it happened. And it was, indeed, amazing. "When you are exploring movement, you forget about the world outside, and focus on the smaller, lovelier world you are creating- its a lot easier to handle." I heard this quote, but I don't remember who said it...but its brilliant and very true. Its soooo nice to be able to forget. Just be in the moment you are creating. You get this with all types of theatre, but in my opinion, its easier to forget when you can just experiment with physicality and not have to worry who has the next line...wow, that sounds lazy...I didn't mean it like that...but you get what I

The wonderful Gemma Whelan everyone... Daily, if not sometimes hourly, I find I have something I want to say about Yew Tree and the work that we do. Occasionally, if I’m feeling brave i decide I’m going write it down …and so here we arrive at my blog. As part of the writer’s session this week we looked at habits and what the word meant. We discussed how, as a word, it is burdened with negative connotations and that a ‘habit’ is perceived by many as a destructive pattern that you routinely do. After much thought, discussion and yet more discussion (for writers they’re awfully keen on talking…oh and Haribo’s) we came to the conclusion that there are both bad and good habits and that the only connection they have to each other is the need we have, as people, to do that ‘habit ‘ as much as we can. The rich eiderdown of our lives are made from tiny threads, lots of which are habitual behaviour... brushing teeth morning and night…the need for cake with tea… making the bed as soon as we

I like the fact that every Connections play makes a different demand on us as a company…and Shooting Truth is proving to be no exception. We’re now back in rehearsals after Christmas and holidays etc that won’t stop until our performance at the very start of March. Last night in rehearsals I became acutely aware of the demands that the play places on the actors and in turn the directors… First of all I have to give credit where it’s due, never have I had such a disciplined cast…I was so proud of all of the people at the rehearsal yesterday for being off text and reaping the rewards of doing some serious work since I last saw them…one of the many upsides of this is that it reveals the gaps and missing links early in the process so that we can address them and make the production so much richer… The things that I’m most aware of at the moment resonate with so many of our production and therefore are useful for all of you to consider whether or not you’re in Shooting Truth…they’re simpl

Yew Tree’s Connection’s play this year is ‘Shooting Truth’ and I’m proud to be part of the cast who are hopefully off to Kendal! Rhiann is our guest blogger for the day... So this week, The Ensemble cast who are performing a piece before the play starts had a read through of our amazing script which had been finished off two weeks before. While Sarah & Danny recapped the 21st Century scenes, we all looked at our lines and noticed how everything flowed really lovely and how it all made sense. I also noticed about how much everything was linked and the consequences of the accusation of witchcraft were. Witchcraft is the stimulus of our piece which had given us ideas and we’d all added bits and pieces to which was really fun to do because we had chance to stay keys thing we knew about sorcery and how the people were seen as witches. After our read through, we rehearsed our first scene which is looks amazing and noticed how everything seemed to be connected as well as linked. So each s

I’m getting impatient now…holidays are all very well and I’ve enjoyed mine immensely but it’s been too long since Yew Tree Youth Theatre was in full swing. Although there has been significant continuous provision throughout the festive season as a result of the Black Company workshops, writers sessions and Shooting Truth rehearsals there’s a definite sense that we should be back up and at full strength as soon as possible. Fortuitously Monday sees the spring term 2011 start in earnest and I can’t wait. There is so much to look forward to, after the graft we all did to get Christmas productions ready Spring term is traditionally a term of development. It will involve lots of workshops where you can find your feet, enjoy playing with drama - just for the sake of it - and dive into creative opportunities to develop your significant talent. This term is about appreciating the fact that at Yew Tree you can engage with drama simply for the enjoyment of it with likeminded people who are

Jonathan Hopwood with the 250th blog... I think it is important for things to be novel. Over time I think it is very easy for something that is extremely important to you to become standard and taken for granted and I think this is something we need to rectify because, if we take something we granted, we don’t appreciate it and if we don’t appreciate it, everything becomes a bit stale. As far as I know, there are multiple ways to kick start appreciation – my most frequently used; out of my control tactic is having a ‘lack of’ this something. Not having this thing in your life as often as you would like it makes you realise how grateful you were to have it and all the things that came with it. Another tactic into triggering true appreciation is to experience the thing going on in front of your eyes and having it spelt out to you how amazing this thing is. When you see such a display of magnificence by something that is so wonderful, not only does it primarily make you feel good inside i

Cassidy who has to have demonstrated one of the greatest examples of commitment this week also wrote a blog....how's that for dedication... This winter we started our rehearsals for ‘Shooting Truth’ the chosen play for connections which we will take to Kendal in 2011. On Wednesday we had our first mammoth day of rehearsals in the chilly dance studio lasting 6 hours! This date seemed a tricky one to make being so soon after Christmas (Happy Late Christmas) I travelled up from London for the day specially for Yew Tree. It was a productive day for both the script and ensemble sections. Scene 5 was reached in the play and all the scenes looked so fantastic all ready after only a few rehearsals. Within the ensemble we read through our first sections and took it upon ourselves to think of ideas for the next part despite the freezing conditions of the back room we made good progress and have now mapped out our first sections. Altogether the day was really enjoyable, who knew rehearsing wa