Looking to yourself...

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I pride myself on the sense of support and positivity we cultivate at YTYT…its not perfect but it’s pretty good and I’m impressed and gratified by the way you help promote the values of nurture and encouragement that are so important to me and to Yew Tree Youth Theatre.

However I’m about to propose something that at first might seem to contradict this…don’t worry...it doesn’t, it just might appear to, but go with me…

Often I come home from rehearsals and talk about how good a member of the company I’ve been working with is, how they’ve improved, or made a discovery or tried something new or worked really hard…I realised this week that haven’t been doing that recently…It’s not that anyone is doing badly…you really are impressive its just that no one seems to be really bothered about being brilliant and if you are you’re not working hard enough for me to see it…

It just feels like your energy isn’t being employed in the direction that best serves the company, the play and the production.  Too many witty asides to make each other laugh, too many distractions, too much of a need to be liked…there’s a complacency and flippancy that is unworthy of you and of your companies.

So this is my proposal…as we get nearer to performance aim to be the person who I talk about after the rehearsal…aim to get positive attention for your work with the text, for your characterisation, for your clarity of attention, for your focus and your energy, for your openness…not the instant gratification of a cheap laugh…be the person that raises the bar, that leads by example…and this is the thing that you might raise your eyes at…be better than everyone else…

The reason that last bit doesn’t negate the first paragraph is that you can be the best without wishing others were worse, you can rise above without putting anyone else down, you can expect more from yourself without thinking any less of anyone else…we don’t need to compromise our community to be brilliant but we do need to do better to reach our potential…

One last thing…this has to happen now…not in a couple of weeks when we’ve left it too late to make the most of the improvements…as I type this I’m excited as to what I might see if you take this on board…

1 day later...

Stop Press…in the time since writing this and posting it lots of Sapphire genuinely showed how rising to the challenge is done…go on the brilliant Sapphire Company…

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