Things I'd say to you everyday...

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It’s that time of the year when I start to feel a little crazed…I have seven Christmas performances in rehearsals that are almost on the brink of being good…almost but not quite…it’s so frustrating! 

The desire to create Christmas Camp is overwhelming…get all of the performers out of school for a week so I can work with them full time to achieve the huge potential they all have to be brilliant…but apparently that’s not allowed so instead I have written a list of the things I want all Youth Theatre actors to have at the front of their head during their last week of rehearsals but possibly more importantly in between – if they could think around these things for some time every day that would my ideal situation…

So here we are…Yew Tree Youth Theatre members please:

Say your lines every day out loud…in your head doesn’t get it done – it means they are theoretically learnt not practically learnt…it has to be out loud…only then will you have the confidence to apply intention, timing and understanding of the situation your character is in during performance

Understand your character’s journey through the play – the entirety of it…if there are any moments you don’t understand ask me…to do this you will need to have thought about it before the rehearsal – ideally you would be reading the entire script every day to get a clearer and clearer idea about your place in the world of the play

Understand every one of your character’s relationships in the play fully…if there are any you don’t understand ask me…to do this you will need to have thought about it before the rehearsal – ideally you would be reading the entire script every day to get a clearer and clearer idea about your interaction with each character

Understand that your voice and physicality are instruments of communication – if you warm them up and practice technique they will work better…for example do a 15 minute voice session using lines of the play every day and you would experience a real difference in what you were able to achieve in rehearsals and performance

Understand that there is a direct correlation between the amount of time, effort, energy, thought, passion, positivity, intelligence, empathy and sensitivity invested by each individual and the standard of the performance – ask yourself what can you do more of both within and outside of rehearsals to create the optimum production

During the runs be in the moment 100% - that sounds obvious but none of you are doing it…if you’ve had chance to think about anything else, in the time it takes to run the play, something will have been compromised or missed…there is nothing more powerful than every member of the cast positively focused on a piece of performance

The temptation to paste the link to this on every performers wall is great but perhaps that would be a little too invasive so what about this? Every youth theatre member who reads this, could you paste the link to the blog on your wall with an enticing message to get other youth theatre members to read it…every Sunday we get at least 70 views on here (and more during as the week goes on) let’s see if we can beat 100 today…I’ll keep you informed of our progress…oh and when you’ve pasted the link do some of the above yeah?

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