-
Our first blogger is Hollie...

Today was my first Yew Tree session back after Christmas it was a long day of Connections. We discovered things about our characters and then went on to developing another section of the script whilst also making a song and a short piece of physical theatre. Today was challenging to say the least but we all battled through it to make some incredible discoveries and pieces of art.
We started by recapping the scenes that we had already blocked delving further into the lines and thinking about the relationships and the intentions behind every line. After we had recapped our previous work we started to do some work on our character thinking about full names and family and friends. I found that my character, Lucy Lime, is very lonely in the outside world and interacted mainly with adults. This made my approach to the others in the group a lot different because of how I act around them and my maturity in my character compared to the others that still like to play games.
We then took a short break to see what the Darkness in the Light cast had produced. This was the first day that they had got to work with their script. The work they got done in such a short space of time was remarkable and really shows the contrast and clear relationship between the Sun and the Moon. I loved watching this it helped me understand more of the context and ideas of the sun and moon and the ideas rituals that revolve around them.
The next part was the scariest bit of the day. I had to launch myself into the arms of Sam W and Bailey which was absolutely terrifying. As we have double cast Eclipse we decided we were going to have a chorus in each cast. Whist one cast is doing the action the other cast would be reacting or retelling in a more physical theatrey kind of way. Today was the hardest physical theatre section of the play to choreograph. We played around with different ideas of how we would represent what was going on in the scene (I don't want to give away spoilers so that's all you're getting) this apparently included jumping over and into people and being lifted into to air in many scary what felt like life threatening ways until we all decided on a way that would look smooth and fit the text. Eventually we combined everyone's ideas and created a smooth running short piece of physical theatre that I think looks truly amazing. Our next challenge was to come up with a melody for a song in the script which, given we have so many musically talented people in the group, started off as quite a difficult task but with work we quickly produced something that sounded quite good, if I do say so myself ;).
From today's rehearsal I have learnt a lot about my character herself and how she is with people. I have also learnt how hard it is to jump and not die or be too scared to do it. The final thing I have learnt is how to deal with difficult text as the script is written in a slightly different way to normal dialect so means we have to try harder to understand the text and the meaning. I have enjoyed to days rehearsal with everyone. It was a great start to the Yew Tree new year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chloe's Leavers Blog - finally :)

-
  Please excuse how this was written, I do a very silly drama school course, and I haven’t had to write more than my name in 9 months. I’m sat in my silly dorm bed writing me this on my DSA laptop (a win for the mentally ill girlies), realising how utterly bad my ability to Words has become. Anyway.. Leaving YTYT was one of the oddest experiences of my life, and yet, I don’t remember it at all. I’d spent the last few years, waving off some of my closest friends as they went on to conquer their dreams, in a tearful circle, yet all I have is a fuzzy memory and a video saved in an instagram highlight. I’d sell a kidney to try and bring back that experience, to do my final show unclouded by new medication and intrusive thoughts, but as that isn’t possible, I thought I’d finally write my leavers blog, even if it is a year late. I started Yew Tree in 2017, as a way to explore drama outside of the agonising GCSE setting, and across the years, it became a lifeline for me, providing confidence,
Read more

Arwen's Leavers blog

-
I made a start writing this leaver’s blog when I was on a bloody needed holiday over a month ago, on the glorious Isle of Islay in Scotland. I’m re-writing it now, because I think it was naff to be honest. And I’m not in the same mindset as I was then. Also I might have had a few too many drams of whisky whilst writing it there, so there’s that. A line I’ll keep from it however is: “How am I meant to do justice and summarise in my writing the enormity of an impact that Yewtree has had on me these last 5-ish years?” How can I articulate all the skills that I've learnt and developed? The experiences I’ve had? There’s so much, where and what do I start on? So I’ll do just that, and put some of the skills I’ve learnt into use: “You can’t be a creative, a critic, and an editor at the same time” But in fairness - I don’t think I could share and articulate all those things. And I’m not sure that I want to, they’re for me. I can’t put that expectation on myself. The past year I’ve felt as
Read more

Celebrating the past in the present...

-
  Next year Yew Tree Youth Theatre will be 30 years old.   We haven’t quite decided how we will celebrate - any suggestions would be gratefully received. No doubt there will be some nostalgic perambulating down memory lane and some haphazard but joyous celebrating of three decades of creativity we have shared.   Some variation of those two themes would feel fitting. This blog however is something different. This blog is a celebration of the present of those who attended YTYT in the past. Alumni, graduates, previous members – I can never seem to find the right term – but whatever word is chosen I know for sure they are part of the fabric of the youth theatre and I’m grateful to have known all of them, mainly because I have learnt so much from them.   I also can’t put a number on how many people have spent significant time with YTYT over the last 29 years.   I know we started with a group of 8 and now have about 80 members, I know at our peak just before COVID we had about 130 young pe
Read more