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Showing posts from February, 2015

Half term happiness and hyperlinks...

Some people who are lucky enough to be able to take a holiday at this point in the year like to spend their February half term week resting, others go away to foreign climes, still others enjoy daily excursions to enjoy the coast or soak up one of the many local cultural diversions whilst many more use it as a chance simply to catch up on all of those tasks and jobs that get left behind in the hurly burly of term time life.   Not me and not the cast of Hacktivists .   We grafted hard …six hours rehearsal every day…fuelled by far too many portions of chips from the shop across the road and an excessive amount of confectionary…seriously we were living the dream…all in the name of creating a National Theatre Connections production to be proud of… Monday was all about consolidating the work done since the play was cast last November.   It was in pretty good shape by the end of the first day but there were still aspects of it that needed creative solutions and the tasks for the re
Tom is our guest blogger this week Right okay, so as you have probably seen from the ridiculous amount of social media advertisement going on, next week is the performance of our National Theatre Connections play. It’s actually quite fitting that the internet has been our main form of publicising, as the themes of this year’s production (Hacktivists) are all about how our personal information shared on the web is used by the government and how groups all over the world are intent on stopping this theft of data.  I have taken part in 3 connections now, and every year it gets to half term and I realise that everything I was doing in the past rehearsals is about half of what I need to be giving. There is always more you can find out, about character, about relationships, about the text and most importantly, the other cast members. I have been incredibly privileged to work with some fantastic people over this process, and I would like to thank every single one of them for the
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The wonderful Cheryl has blogged about her work with Yew Tree and St Michaels Academy  There are times in the life of a composer when you walk into a new working situation – new faces, unknown expectations, talents and enthusiasms yet to be unearthed – and from the very moment you meet your new collaborators there is mutual trust, rapport, laughter, creativity, music-making of an exhilarating nature. It has been thus since the new year with the year 6 students at St. Michael’s Academy in Flanshaw, and our work together came to a temporary halt this week with performances of our new songs of the River Calder to each other after several sessions of composing, instrumental work and singing. We’ll resume our musical journey after Easter – I can hardly wait! We began by exploring rivers in general and composing our musical rivers. You can read about the story of that day here : From this first session, I could see and hear that they were going to be full of creativity and eagern

A decade to remember...

It’s nearly 9pm and there is a sense of anticipation about the Yew Tree base this Sunday night, for tomorrow is a very special day…tomorrow we will embark on the first day of our week of rehearsals for our Connections production – Hacktivists.    It’s a great play that makes you think about things you take for granted...the internet, social networking and our ability to do what is right when faced with a difficult decision...if you’d like to come and see it, which I heartily recommend you do, all the details are here …. This cast and all the individuals within it are the next in a very prestigious line of young people who have grafted hard and grown tall as part of the Connections plays and I find myself remembering all of the individuals that have been part of my connections history tonight… The first connections play I directed I picked up halfway through the process when the director who had worked on, “Asleep Under the Dark Earth,” for Pilot Youth Theatre moved away…it was
And we have one from Bobbie too... Recently at Gold, we've not working towards a performance, instead, each week we are spending some time on a certain thing that someone had asked to do. One week it has been mime, the next melodrama. And this week, because it was Valentines Day, what would we want to do other than fear and suspense? It was a totally different thing to what we've been doing since after Christmas, with the rest being light hearted and funny, this was dark and suspenseful. To kick off the day, we started with Killer 12 and Murderer (y'know, 'grown up' golden egg). Both games something that would fit quite nicely with the weeks theme but also, we got lessons from them. Like how, when things started to get a little tense in Killer 12, someone would laugh and relieve all the tension and for fear and suspense to work, we'd have to fight again the urge to laugh, and make things better, and actually go the opposite way with it and with Murderer, we l
Leah's premiere blog...whoop, whoop! This is my first blog so you will have to excuse me if its a little dull and/or short. Right, well, I guess I should start with Gold company's session of fear and suspense (ironic, I know). After the wonderful Georgia Petts suggested boycotting Valentines day and creating horror and suspense, everyone agreed but was a bit in the dark on how to make it scary without it being comical. To start us off, we played a game of Killer 12 and then Murder (See where the pattern is heading?), both of which are now personal favourites. To get us thinking about how to make scary not comical, we devised 4 very small snippets of something strange and created a short scene by putting them together. We then altered them slightly by making them subtly creepy. In different groups, we were then told to come up with a short scene/story to be performed in the dark. The limited use of words and larger use of facial expression proved to be a challenge for me but w

Mime merriment...

After a full on schedule of performances since September 2014 we’re doing weekly workshops at Gold at the moment with the focus of the workshop being chosen by members of the Company…we’ve played lots of games, dived into melodramatic mayhem and gambled with YT roulette…just occasionally someone picks a topic and I’m not convinced that it’s going to entertain people as much as they think it might and this week was one of those weeks.   Matthew had picked Mime and as I was travelling into Wakefield on Saturday morning I was wondering if what I had planned was going to go down well or if it was all going to feel a little too much like hard work…especially as we had some filming for the Hepworth to do at the same time… The fact that there was not just one but two types of Lemon cake to choose from as I made my weekly stop at Marmalade on the Square seemed a good omen and indeed it was… Gold Company took to mime like ducks to water – why I doubted them I will never know…I should know
Georgia is our guest blogger this week... Yew Tree this week has been great! Started Saturday with a smaller than usual gold group but I've got to admit it was really nice and quiet.... BECAUSE WE DID MIME!!! Please laugh. As well as the workshop in mine we helped out and did some recording for a presentation video, it was nice doing something different and helping out some non Yew Tree people. When we did the mime workshop we all had some wacky ideas...hairdressers having extensions stolen, awkward dates and elderly parents with their crazy antics! We also did some work on our Lazi's from Comedia del arte which was a lot more fun than it was at school. Working in different groups and with a completely new rule of drama was refreshing and really enjoyable, and it was also really nice to have a temporary new starter with us! Can not wait for 'horror' next week!

Back to Basics...

This week we went back to basics in Black Company with a two and a half hour voice class that explored all aspects of vocal technique.   Now…first it’s worth admitting that I am a bit of a voice geek…I’m fascinated by the way that slight adjustment in posture, breath, placement and intention can significantly change the sound we make.   With just a little consciousness we become warmer, clearer more in control of how we speak.     Also I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of meeting some inspiring experts over my career who have taught me so many techniques and given me such valuable insight.   Saying that however, voice isn’t one of the most glamorous aspects of acting and to really make lasting progress there is an awful lot of hard work involved. In addition exploring voice can often make people feel vulnerable, still I love it and the Black Company session this week illustrated one of the reasons… During the workshop we took a journey through physicality, breath, resonance, ton
Today Dec makes his blog writing debut... This week at Gold Company we did Melodrama. It was nice to be back after missing the games session the week before. Even Sarah would agree I wasn’t fixed on the idea of Melodrama but I had a go. We started off by playing the Bean Game, and King of the Jungle. The best part about Gold was the performance we made with Melodrama, no one had really done loads of Melodrama before so it was a challenge for everyone. Let’s just say I think Melodrama wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Later on in the day we had a Connections rehearsal which went amazingly well. At the start everyone always feels so tired because people have been dancing all day and people have been at Gold, yet we can still pull of successful rehearsal. I felt that after yesterday’s work on scene 1 and 4 it is actually coming together, mainly because each persons character seemed they were convinced they were locked in a room. People’s character really started to grow t