As debut blogs go, this one by Jacob door is impressive!
Well, this is my first time writing a guest blog for Yew tree for the whole five years I’ve been going to Yew tree so to be honest I consider it an achievement to have avoided Sarah’s gaze this long. But alas she has caught up to me and I must talk about Lit On The Lawn, the “Madcap literary adventure” performed by Gold Company, which I am a proud part of. Lit On The Lawn has been our focus for a good three months now, starting off alongside our film project The Detective Collective, which if you want to hear more about read Sam Bentley’s previous blog. The whole premise of our idea was to track the development of British literature from the swords of sir Gawain And The Green Knight to the Wands and wizardry of Harry Potter. This whole performance always took just over twenty five minutes when we say at the beginning that “all of British literature in twenty minutes”. So of course as soon as we put a joke in about how it’s taken longer, both plays only take twenty minutes, typical show business. It was an incredibly enjoyable performance not just to watch, but also to perform. Not only was it a great idea it came with some benefits. It allowed for references to modern culture and of course included a Kate Bush song. However, most importantly it allowed me to confess my love for Benedict Cumberbatch without being judged for it. It was truly a great performance and the praises about it just kept coming in. you would think this is a shameless plug to come see it but we were only doing two performances so if you didn’t see it, then you’ve unfortunately missed out. This performance also allowed for some great jokes and scenes. We had the talented Dec giving the wisdom of Chaucer through a rap (we’ve got to appeal to the kids somehow) we had great narration from Toni and Alice all the way through the play keeping the pace quick and snappy, and we had Tommy who, having previously ‘bricking it’ about the performance, went from Shakespeare to gothic to melodramatic. The ones I mentioned were amazing but what was great about Lit On The Lawn was that it gave everyone a chance to have time in the spotlight and everyone smashed it. But it wasn’t just chance to be the centre of attention that Lit On The Lawn gave us. It also gave us the chance to say to the Wakefield area “hey there’s a youth drama group here, we’re pretty great.” On a completely different note I am also a volunteer at the marvellous orange company. At the ripe young age of six to eleven you might think that they would be uncontrollable nightmares who don’t learn lines and just sit doing child things, I don’t know being eight was a long time ago for me. But no, that couldn’t be further from the truth, these kids are fantastic, they put in the effort, they learn their lines and their performances are on par with some of the most experienced people I’ve seen in Black company (no offence to anybody in Black company). This volunteering hasn’t just taught me how to help the kids, it has also taught me a new respect for doing sound for productions, its surprisingly more fiddly than previously thought and lord help you if you don’t come in quick enough with the music cues when Sarah is in the room. And that is my blog, slightly longer than I was asked to do but what can I say, I got a lot to say.
Well, this is my first time writing a guest blog for Yew tree for the whole five years I’ve been going to Yew tree so to be honest I consider it an achievement to have avoided Sarah’s gaze this long. But alas she has caught up to me and I must talk about Lit On The Lawn, the “Madcap literary adventure” performed by Gold Company, which I am a proud part of. Lit On The Lawn has been our focus for a good three months now, starting off alongside our film project The Detective Collective, which if you want to hear more about read Sam Bentley’s previous blog. The whole premise of our idea was to track the development of British literature from the swords of sir Gawain And The Green Knight to the Wands and wizardry of Harry Potter. This whole performance always took just over twenty five minutes when we say at the beginning that “all of British literature in twenty minutes”. So of course as soon as we put a joke in about how it’s taken longer, both plays only take twenty minutes, typical show business. It was an incredibly enjoyable performance not just to watch, but also to perform. Not only was it a great idea it came with some benefits. It allowed for references to modern culture and of course included a Kate Bush song. However, most importantly it allowed me to confess my love for Benedict Cumberbatch without being judged for it. It was truly a great performance and the praises about it just kept coming in. you would think this is a shameless plug to come see it but we were only doing two performances so if you didn’t see it, then you’ve unfortunately missed out. This performance also allowed for some great jokes and scenes. We had the talented Dec giving the wisdom of Chaucer through a rap (we’ve got to appeal to the kids somehow) we had great narration from Toni and Alice all the way through the play keeping the pace quick and snappy, and we had Tommy who, having previously ‘bricking it’ about the performance, went from Shakespeare to gothic to melodramatic. The ones I mentioned were amazing but what was great about Lit On The Lawn was that it gave everyone a chance to have time in the spotlight and everyone smashed it. But it wasn’t just chance to be the centre of attention that Lit On The Lawn gave us. It also gave us the chance to say to the Wakefield area “hey there’s a youth drama group here, we’re pretty great.” On a completely different note I am also a volunteer at the marvellous orange company. At the ripe young age of six to eleven you might think that they would be uncontrollable nightmares who don’t learn lines and just sit doing child things, I don’t know being eight was a long time ago for me. But no, that couldn’t be further from the truth, these kids are fantastic, they put in the effort, they learn their lines and their performances are on par with some of the most experienced people I’ve seen in Black company (no offence to anybody in Black company). This volunteering hasn’t just taught me how to help the kids, it has also taught me a new respect for doing sound for productions, its surprisingly more fiddly than previously thought and lord help you if you don’t come in quick enough with the music cues when Sarah is in the room. And that is my blog, slightly longer than I was asked to do but what can I say, I got a lot to say.
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