Buzzing Like a Bee...

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This week YTYT has been abuzz with all sorts of exciting stuff…someone forgot to tell us it’s supposed to be a holiday…

We had the intriguing new workshop day “Creating Characters” which was founded with a spark of inspiration from Jess.   Participants spent the day following, in a small way, in the footsteps of Leigh and Stanislavski with a sprinkling of Boal for good measure.  The result was the creation of a cast of original characters and the start of a filmic story that had so much potential.  I thoroughly enjoyed the attention to detail and what that offered us as theatre makers. It’s definitely one of those things that was good but could be even better and so I’ll be able to build on it next year and make an even better experience for the participants.

Then we spent two days filming…17 scenes – which meant 17 locations, casts, scripts etc etc.  I was so impressed with the professional way each actor conducted themselves making our job as easy as any crew could hope for.  They’ve all been edited and I’ll be able to see them in the next couple of days...we have another 18 to do which is a little daunting but this week has given me more confidence than I thought I’d have at this stage.

We finished off the filming days with a games session for Black…Oh.  My.  Word.  I’m not sure if the 24 actors had felt particularly repressed over the week or what but the ridiculously frenetic session left me feeling every hour of the filming that had preceded it…let’s just say it will be a while before I play King Ball again…

The finale of the week was the Play in a Day with the younger actors of Yew Tree some of whom had signed up for their first ever experience.  I decided to use Giraffe’s can’t Dance as the starting point as by using familiar material I would have more time to concentrate on the participants.  It paid off, in 6 hours we went from nothing to a brilliant interpretation of the story…all 15 actors aged 6 – 12 years old working together to entertain the audience that had assembled to support them…it was a joyous day…

As a final word I just want to salute Dee, James, Mikey and Jack who had a part to play in every one of those events…you get the YTYT dedication award for this week…thank you…

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