What's happening at YTYT

Emily from Orange who also attends WYTDC wrote a blog about performing on Friday...she is perhaps one of our youngest bloggers yet! On Friday at West Yorkshire Theatre Dance we performed 2 types of storytelling theatre, “Princess Blankets,” and “Spirits Of The Landscape!” From my point of view, the voices were clear and even though sometimes we stumbled on words we just picked it up without making a big deal... We learned that not all types of drama have to be just scripts its nice to do that but then its more of a challenge learning them in class! The best bit was in Princess Blankets when we had to recreate the blankets within movement but it wasn't dancing as such. You could tell by the audience's faces that they were listening as they kept smiling!!!!

Last week was all about the anticipation for a full on YTYT week so it seemed only fair that this week I should reflect on some of the highlights… Before we get into the performances which is going to be my focus of the blog, Aladdin is a treat…a treat I tell you…my next task after this is to write the next scene and I’m positively looking forward.   What I particularly like about it is how we balance not taking it too seriously with integrity…which is pretty much a reflection of the Sapphire Company itself… Which brings us on to Comedy of Errors, which was in fact a triumph.   The Black Company created something that can only be described as outstanding.   They pushed the boundaries of performance, of bravery, of focus to produce a performance which presented Shakespeare’s most farcical play to their audience with a flourish.   Never have I been more proud of them.   Inevitably some of the audience were baffled by the cast’s quick fire delivery of iambic pentameter,

Second up is Beth from Crimson - who's performance of Touchstone was a delight... My first attempt at a blog- well there's a first for everything! So here goes.... As part of getting our play prepared for the evening, we spent the day at Nostel Priory; getting used to the space, the wind, and sometimes the rain. We rehearsed the play twice fully- finding parts to improve on each time, which later helped with our performance.   After the first run (and a lovely half an hour break) we had a full vocal warm up exercise. I thought that this was great because it helped us with our projection, so we could boost our voices- and at least try and compete against the raging wind! It also helped me to learn how to speak some of those difficult Shakespearean words! When we had finished the second run, we were given feedback, and enabled time to get into the thoughts of our character, and walk around the space as our character. Also, we looked at some of the lines which we thought were di

First guest blog of the week is from Yasmin who played one of the Dromio's in Comedy of Errors So this week was performance week for Black Company’s Comedy of Errors!! We had our dress rehearsal in Black Cloud at the Hepworth on Tuesday in lovely sunny weather and everything went well.   On Wednesday it was sunny throughout the day and then it decided to rain in the evening which was obviously rubbish considering we were performing outside! But we didn’t let this get us down and the performance went brilliantly. We had a great audience who laughed at all the right times (especially Gemma!) and generally looked interested, which is always nice! As well as a good audience, we also had lovely feedback, which made us look forward to Thursday night’s performance even more. On Thursday, everyone woke up to horrible miserable weather (especially considering we’re in June!!). The forecast wasn’t looking good for the evening but, after much deliberation, it was decided we were going to pe

Being the artistic director of Yew Tree Youth Theatre…is literally a dream job, it is my dream job.  I love it…it occupies my thoughts when I’m awake and my dreams when I am asleep and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  However it is undeniably all encompassing, unrelenting and quite frankly often simply ridiculous.  There are the big things to sort out: funding, staffing, strategy, programming.  The medium things to get done: planning sessions, writing scripts, providing references and offering advice.  Finally there are the little things: the individual circumstances of each person I work with do they need space, inspiration, challenging, nurturing…an understanding shoulder to cry on or a metaphorical slap in the face for the decisions they’re making about their present or their future or both…as I said all in all a little all encompassing… That’s just in an average week…and next week is going to be anything but average. Monday I direct Sapphire…now progressing full steam ahead

Brittany from Sapphire writes her first blog for us... Blogging….not something I’ve done before…but I’m going to attempt it. I will tell you the story of a theatre group, not too far away, who arrived one day to be told ‘we’re going to devise our play’. Cue some smiles, some -.- faces (no other way to describe them…), and some confusion (mostly on my part). So, after games (and a new rule put forward by Sarah: no groaning at game choices) we were given the task to devise the first couple of scenes of Aladdin. A few minutes talking and we were away!!!   Now, as a new recruit this year and never having done anything like this before I was put into a group of professionals (AKA, people who understood what devising entailed, and who could guide me through this confusing time) and we were given scene two to devise. I will not tell you the plot of this particular scene, as that is best left for our performances, but it was pretty simple. Or so I thought. Me being who I am, it was hard to g

YTYT went national today as I travelled to Bexhill on Sea to deliver workshops for a youth theatre based there.  Now for those of you who have never been, which up until this weekend included me, Bexhill on Sea is way, way, way down the country…past London and keep going for a good couple of hours…until you reach Sussex.  As I type this I am still making my way back to Wakefield with a good couple of hours to go.  So was it worth it…all that travelling to work with a group of strangers.  The answer is definitely yes…I spent all day playing games, creating theatre, teaching physical theatre.  The satisfaction of bestowing the gift of continuous images on a group of 15 year olds that have never come across it and then turning devised physical duets into a piece of theatre with scripts they had written themselves was magic.  Not to mention of course that I found myself in the same restaurant as my absolute hero Eddie Izzard on the Saturday evening, I was entirely start struck for a

Tom blogs about our foray into Shakespeare So then…its all being going on at Black Company these past few weeks I can tell you all...we’ve been going crazy for a bit of Shakespeare we have as we come to the final stages of rehearsals for a our performance of…*Sound of royal trumpet procession*…The Comedy of Errors!! *Crazy applause, wooooooo* That’s right…Shakespeare’s shortest comedy will be performed by the Black Company, and it’s been quite a hilarious journey so far (see what I did there?) The group has been working really hard over the last couple of weeks and so far everything seems to be going rather great (: everyone is almost off script, the blocking and staging is just about finished and all the costumes and props are being gathered together…all the ticks and tocks of the clock are slowly working away till the finish product…however it has all been just fun and laughs…the subject of Shakespeare, with all his meanings, his words and grand speeches, it can be very hard for

This week is National Volunteers Week…and I thought I’d take advantage of that to highlight how much YTYT values the brilliant volunteers that enrich your Youth Theatre to a massive and wonderful extent… This weeks volunteering began on Monday where Jack and James assisted at St George’s Playzone and then at Sapphire Company…something they do every week – Dillon and Mikey do their fair share on a Monday too it’s just wasn’t their week this week.   It’s worth noting that it was a particularly special week at Sapphire as the work Jack had been doing on his play came to a rewarding conclusion with the sharing of his work…the piece was lovely and a brilliant reflection of both performers and director, but he has given you the details of that in his blog… On Tuesday Joanna, Jess and Merv volunteered at Ruby.   The rapport these three have with the young people in this group is second to none and has evolved through such consistent dedication.   It’s a pleasure to be in the

Final Team Jack blog from Jack Iredale So it ends. Dun dun duuuuun. In all seriousness, I can’t say enough how brilliant the team have been. They’ve followed my ridiculous, occasionally erratic train of thought, and with their own ideas in place, helped to craft a solid piece of theatre. The nerve wracking thing about the final session wasn’t the performance at the end of it. I had nothing but confidence in the group. No, it was the fact that this was the session where I was assessed by my tutor from Calderdale.   There was nothing to worry about. He praised the way the group worked together, that no one’s ideas were disregarded and that no-one tried to one up each other. He also found the way I direct to be...different, but not necessarily in a bad way. Though he didn’t get to see the final performance, he really enjoyed what he saw.   After finally performing the piece to the rest of Sapphire company, both sides had some thoughts about the piece. Those in it noted that they hadn’t r

Amy Walton from Gold Company is our first guest blogger... Haven’t done a blog in a while so I thought let’s do one today.... As I arrived at Yew Tree this morning I had no idea of what scenario we would be given, we started off with a few games... Coconuts and even Captain Beaky safe to say I didn’t do very good in it! A long improvisation was what we were doing today in previous sessions like this we have done such scenes as a bus journey and a school trip; turns out today Gold on holiday was the scenario - the destination Portugal! Firstly we had to arrive at the airport and board the plane, many characters created the atmosphere for the flight including lads on holiday and their mum, controlling relatives and even insurance managers and staff. We eventually got to the destination and many problems soon arose including hotels being closed to no coaches to having to sit in an awkward picnic with the rest of the tourists but this wasn’t boring as we had cruise en