What's happening at YTYT

Life is more than a little hectic at the moment with YTYT gearing up for 7 different performances all to be staged in the next 2 months.   It’s tricky juggling all the roles that a production requires as each of the companies performing have one director and if we are lucky one of our brilliant assistants and that’s it.   This means that in addition to the role of directing this person has to fulfill all the other roles from props to costumes, sound to logistics and of course marketing…it can be reasonably overwhelming especially at a time like this…so this blog is a plea to my casts and of course Gemma to help out with at least the last one of those The work you are producing within your companies is brilliant so I want to be able to celebrate it with your family and friends.   In order to do this you must tell them about it…use the facebook events pages, ring them, text them, share the trailors and the pictures…make sure they know that they have the chance to see

And the second guest blog is from Sam W It was without the burden of music centre or the restraint of not having a decent breakfast (for I can assure you, my Apricot Wheats were divine), that I found my way to Thornes Park this morning to visit Gold Company in rehearsal for ‘ The Sea .’ After a best and worst sesh in which Grace and I relished the joys of socks, it was straight down to business: a quick warm-up which served a dual purpose, firstly to warm us up, and secondly to briefly give us the chance to explore different styles of movement – a useful thing to bear in mind when you are creating a piece where physical theatre is the primary method of communication. Now, perhaps I was a little too quick with that last statement; another important part of ‘The Sea’ is the words, something we had to bear in mind when it came to devising for the new scenes. Being relatively new to physical theatre, the rules and principles were new to me but we talked about how

Tom O is our first guest blogger T his week I attended two Yew Tree sessions, the Black and Gold companies. I am in the Black company performance of Taming of the Shrew, and on Thursday we managed to reach the end of the play! The challenges that have to be faced in a Shakespeare play are very different to anything in a play such as The Nutcracker or the Christmas shows and it has been slower progress as we have had to spend a long time getting round these. My part in the play is Grumio, and I don't do much at the end, so I mainly (along with Beth and Bessie) got to stand back and admire some of the fantastic performances by our fellow cast members. Yasmin's speech at the end genuinely was something to behold, there is definitely a reason she's done so well in drama auditions!  Because I hadn't had enough Yew Tree loveliness i went to a Gold company session to see how their production of The Sea was coming along and it's safe to say it's coming along brilli

Taking on a full length Shakespeare is a huge task for a youth theatre…but Black Company like a challenge so that’s exactly what we are doing.   It’s a different sort of a process in some ways…progress is slow, as even the most confident experience actors have to spend much more time in preparations for rehearsals.   Lines take longer to learn and confidence takes a beating because the landscape is unfamiliar.   There’s no avoiding the fact that the text and language requires something more from the actors…something richer and invested.   I found myself at the last rehearsal creating a metaphor about jackets* to describe it…it’s work in progress but it has the potential to be useful…it goes something like this… If we compare the ideal relationship of the text to the actor as a well fitting jacket that the actor feels comfortable in…at home with…confident wearing…the temptation is with youth theatre actors that in order to make the jacket well fitted they beat the text int

Yasmin gives us an insight into taking on one of Shakespeare's controversial female roles... I'm going to be playing Katherina in Yew Tree's performance of The Taming of the Shrew on Sunday 6th July at Nostell Priory and I'm really excited! As soon as Sarah told us that Black company would be doing this play, I had my heart set on playing Kate. I love the idea that Shakespeare wrote an aggressive and rule breaking leading woman. I was already doing a monologue from taming of the shrew for my drama school auditions and so I knew about the character and the play before rehearsals started. The main challenge for me was that there are so many different ideas, thoughts and interpretations of the play and it's characters that's its hard to make your own decisions and stick to them. The most obvious ambiguity surrounding the character of Katherina is whether or not she really has been tamed by her husband Petruchio by the end of the play or whether she is

I have been thinking a lot about resilience this week – partly inspired by the fact that my 16 year old daughter is, as I type, is trekking 16 miles across the Yorkshire dales.   As anyone who has met her will know, Amy is not an outdoors person but nonetheless she has donned her walking boots, her waterproofs, her woolly hat, her brave face and is getting it done.   However my thoughts on resilience have come from something much more wide spread.   From knowing that so many of the people I spend my time with, have had a difficult week full of anxiety, loss, disappointment and sadness.   This has been the case for both members of the youth theatre and also people from the rest of the walks of life I encounter week to week.   I’ve been saddened by this but also incredibly impressed by how some of them…even after the toughest time bounce back and look for the positives in what they are going through or to the potential for happier times in the future.   Of course

Toni is the guest blogger this week... We’re back at Gold! Huzzah! After a three week break (and more for me), we have finally started to piece together and structure our physical theatre piece, The Sea, to be performed at St. Austen’s theatre in June. We started the session with Best and Worst, People to People and the Bean Game before we ran through what we had set for the prologue to remind ourselves of what we did. The whole script is beautifully written by our own Tiff and Sarah; especially the prologue which looks great when the physical theatre is added to it! The lifts look fantastic too, as well as fun to do! Everyone was really helpful to make sure people knew what they were doing and before we knew it, we were running through the beginning rather smoothly. After a break, and some Kendal mint cake, we got started on setting the foundations for scene 1. This is the scene where we first meet Anna as she says goodbye to her family for a trip across the ocean and also whe

So you pick a play, you cross your fingers that you’re going to be able to direct it and that you’ll have enough actors who’ll want to be part of it…you cast it, you cross your fingers you’ve made the right decisions, you gather a creative team…you cross your fingers they’ll stick with you… Then you start rehearsals, you experiment and play, you build characters and relationships, you challenge and make demands…you cross your fingers that at some point the pieces of the production you are creating are going to fit together. Slowly, slowly your production emerges…there are frustrations and break throughs…there are crises and victories but all the time everyone in the production is growing sometimes slowly, sometimes in leaps and bounds.   They’re growing in ability, in skills, in understanding and in confidence.   They’re growing into young people who believe they have something to say and the voice to say it with.   They’re growing into theatre makers and creat

This week's guest blog is written by the cast of The Wardrobe Georgia (Forrest) Petts! - My connections experience is going to be extremely hard to sum up into one paragraph (so it mighty not). At the start the auditions process was something that I was quite nervous about especially as it was in front of everyone, but as my time approached and came the nerves just vanished because everyone was so supportive. When waiting to see if I had got the part I wanted everyone was messaging each other saying they hope everyone was happy with casting, and everyone was at the end. Rehearsals have got to be the most enjoyable part of the process! Half term week brought five days of 10-4 rehearsals and it was absolutely fabulous. Being directed by both Mikey and Sarah proved to be both useful and very helpful in and outside of connections. I quickly became known as the clumsy one, falling over every session, bumping into people, dropping things…that was part of the fun…. And then