Rewriting the book...

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I was mulling over what to write about this week at Yew Tree Youth Theatre and for once not really finding anything to inspire me.  This is an unusual thing, and it’s not that YTYT wasn’t inspiring this week, it’s inspiring by it’s very nature…but it’s been one of those weeks where we’ve just got on with the business of being creative.  Sapphire enjoyed epic situation wink murder, Gold and Black worked hard towards their imminent performance, Jade enjoyed the welcome addition of a new member and those were just the sessions I was present at.  However when I reviewed the entirety of my YTYT week there wasn’t something that stood out as a thing you would want to read about…

Hence I had to look elsewhere and it was in reviewing my week as a drama practitioner that I alighted on something that speaks to the quality of YTYT.  I was running an Aiming Higher workshop in a school with year 6’s on Friday morning.  It was the second I had done that morning and in the first moments I identified a boy who from the start had decided to pull away from the workshop…just a little, just enough to get on my radar.  I paused and looked at him for a moment, trying to decide what action to take. Luckily I managed to find something that changed his morning and because of that the success of the workshop.  I gave him the invitation to rewrite the book…pointing out that I didn’t know him, that I had no opinion of him, that with me he had no reputation and then followed it up with a suggestion that perhaps this was an opportunity to be the best that he could be.  The transformation in him was a quiet thoughtful one…no huge statement or outlandish scene of repentance.  There was just a shift, a quiet decision made and acted upon which meant we, him, me and the rest of the class had the nicest morning considering a successful future full of happiness, hard work and hope. 

Nice story isn’t it…but perhaps you’re wondering what it has got to do with the youth theatre?  It’s this; that every week you have a space to be the best person that you are, a place where the rest of the world doesn’t matter, where you can rewrite your book. Good eh?  All we want in return is for you to take that chance, to enjoy it; to make the most of it…it’s the thing that makes us happiest

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