My brief sojourn to the sea...

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This weekend I took a brief sojourn away from Yew Tree to the sunny seaside – and yes against the odds it was actually sunny!  The reason for my trip to Bridlington was that I had been invited to lead a workshop on Character for some of the attendees to the NODA (National Operatic and Dramatic Association) North East conference.  Now whenever I do anything like this there are a certain amount of nerves at play as I am stepping well out of my comfort zone.  As a result lots of things I don’t worry about usually in terms of my work become prime concerns: will they understand what I’m talking about? Will they value it? Will they engage with it?  All these concerns were compounded by the fact that I wasn’t really sure who I’d have in the room.

It turned out I had nothing to fear…I ended up with a room (with a beautiful sea view) full of about 30 participants and the widest demographic in terms of age and experience of theatre.  From someone in their 20’s old who’d just started work on his first major role to a wonderful lady of 82 who had been doing amateur theatre for over 50 years.  Inspiringly this veteran of the stage had her script with her from the production she was in rehearsals for at the moment.  Between the rest of the group every decade of age was represented, it was great to see such enthusiasm for making performance and drama better.

I had a ball in the workshop, they ate up all the stuff that is embedded into our work at YTYT.  They were hungry for ways to make what they did in the rehearsal room and on stage better moreover the things I could offer them were ideas that a lot of them had never encountered.  We talked about practitioners and practicalities, effort and energy, discovery and discipline. Throughout the workshop all of these adults were so open to the opportunities there are in theatre to understand more about the world, themselves and the art of being other people.  It was a wonderful thing to be part of and we could have filled a whole day instead of the half day slot we were restricted to. 

At the end of the workshop when I thanked them for a lovely morning the faces in front of me looked fulfilled and inspired but also hungry for the next step where they could take the ideas we’d worked with back to their own rehearsal room.  My day was made when my oldest participant said I wish there had been someone like you when I was younger to teach me all of this.  As I left Bridlington to rush back to a YTYT rehearsal that afternoon my only sadness was that I wouldn’t get to see what came of our journey.  My hope is many hours of even more fulfilling enjoyment of the world of theatre they are so passionate about and committed to...

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