What's happening at YTYT

  This year has honestly felt like a whirlwind, I never would have thought that I would still be at Yew Tree by the end of it but there’s no where else I would rather be. At the beginning of summer, I thought I would be leaving and hightailing it off to university but after some complications in acquiring accommodation, I realised that all I wanted was to come back for another year. I remember the phone call I had with Sarah, and the tears streaming down my face, as I felt like everything was falling apart just a little. I’m so glad that she welcomed me back with open arms because it made me see that maybe everything wouldn’t fall apart and that it would be okay. After some renewed confidence, I can say that it was okay and that it will be still.   So, to actually start my year in review, I should probably go back to the beginning of 2022. At the beginning of this, subjectively, awful year, I found myself gearing up for my A-levels as well as starting our new project in Gold company –

  This past year of mine at Yew Tree has certainly been my most memorable one. It’s often easy to keep moving forward onto the next goal or project, but having some time to sit back and reflect, whilst writing this blog, has reminded me of the large sum that I have accomplished and experienced in the past 12 months. It reminded me to be grateful for it, and acknowledge my hard work. And not only just my own achievements, but I’m grateful for the people I’ve been working alongside, and their own individual accomplishments. Safe to say, what I am proud of the most have been the exams I have taken through Yewtree this year (LAMDA, and Shakespeare). I remember saying to Sarah at the start of my first gap year - that I wanted to have every opportunity thrown at me, and, for the most part, I’d like to think that goal is being achieved. Since November last year, I have completed 5 exams. As soon as I finished one, me and Sarah were planning my next - and then the next - and the next. I often

  So now Connor is gone, I’ve tried to write a long blog. It’s not as long as his, don’t think anyone can write as much as Connor did. But hey ho, I’ll give it a go. Sit back and enjoy.  2022 has been a really good year for me.  Starting with Connections. My third connections and one of my favourites, the play was Hunt, and I played Lisa, who was a character nobody wanted to play. I was original double cast as Lisa and other character, but chose to just play Lisa and that was best choice I ever made as Lisa was such a fun character to play. Having so many good moments, from falling off a box and getting paint all over my costume and spending 15 minutes on stage on my phone. Hunt was the best experience of my life, and getting to work with Grace was so nice, never worked together before and it was fun getting to know her. Also, my last connections with my closest friend at yew tree, Lucy, after we performed in Sheffield, it was the best time I had ever seen and was so proud of her. And

Y ew Tree youth theatre: this year was my first year at Emerald company and it has blown me away   E xcellent shows we have done: Saltwater Fairies and Hansel and Gretel   W e love playing games     T his year I’ve started LAMDA and the scripts are terrific  R emembering the lines is a difficult phase but we all pull it off  E ager to do another play  E xcited for 2023!

2022 has certainly been another interesting year at Yew Tree.   In Black Company, we started the year auditioning plays to do in summer, and, much to some people's chagrin (not mine, I was delighted!), settled on 'Much Ado About Nothing.' I dont think anyone would be surprised to learn that this is my favourite Shakespeare play- it's just perfect. Despite initially auditioning for the role of Benedick, I was very happy to get the part of Leonato. I was able to lean into the role of an older gentleman who thinks himself wise, but in actuality is just as foolish as everyone else, rather well I think. I really enjoyed being able to work pretty closely with Jeevan and Kenzie during this play as we had quite a few scenes together. Despite struggling to ever get a full cast together for rehearsals, and a few line hiccups on the night, I think it came together really well and I left feeling proud of what we had achieved as a company. Sadly, this was the last Yew Tree show for

2022 at Yew Tree Theatre has been the making of my daughter. They were completely accepted as the wonderful non-binary person they are, and found their 'tribe' amongst the other young people in their group.    From attending Yew Tree once a week, they then decided to take part in the preparation for the LAMDA exams, and have sought out opportunities to be as big a part of Yew Tree life as possible. With the love and support of Sarah and the other young people of Yew Tree, I have watched my daughter grow in confidence and self-belief. As a child with ASD, who hadn't realised their true identity until recently, I cannot begin to tell you the enormous difference to them that Yew Tree has made. They have found themselves. Our whole family cannot wait to see what 2023 has in store for Yew Tree Youth Theatre.

  My time at Yew Tree has been one of the best experiences of my entire life, to say the least.  Not only has it given me new skills, new friends, and new opportunities, it has also given me the ability to express myself in new ways.     One of the most memorable things I have done this Year at Yew Tree was become a member of Sapphire Company.  It was in Sapphire Company that I got to Perform in “ The Dark Fairy,” where I played the role of Percy the Knight.  This was my favourite Yew Tree performance so far as I got to rap and sing along with my friends.   Throughout this year I also took part in The Miners’ Memorial Service for the second time, which I enjoy because it allows me to discover an aspect of our community’s history which is not always as deeply explored in school as other parts of our history.  I also had the opportunity to take part in the “Wakefield Big Conversation” which provided me with new experiences at Yew Tree, as we got to perform in Wakefield Town Hall in front

  This year at Yew Tree certainly hasn’t gone as I intended it to, but its been memorable. I started the year in Yellow company, where I met some incredible actors and took time to work on my own skills. Unfortunately, I left before the show started to take shape. However I am glad that I participated in selecting the theme for the performance. After the February half term I decided to take the leap and move up to Sapphire company – Its undoubtedly one of the best decisions I’ve made. I got involved with the play almost instantly and was given the part of the Muse of Costume in ‘Live at the Apollo’. I absolutely loved the role and I greatly enjoyed being a part of the cast. When the summer holidays ended I realised that I wanted to do more in Yew Tree and volunteered for the Miners Memorial service and the Big Conversation. These casts were very diverse and discovered my love of acting by performing with actors who had years more experience than me. I feel like I truly belonged in

   WARNING: This blog has been identified to potentially trigger cringe and confusion for any and all readers. Reader discretion is advised.   (there also may be a lot of grammatical mistakes because I can’t be bothered to proof read)   Even that sentence was cringe! Anyway, let’s begin the cringing on the 24 th  March (let’s also have a count on the number of times I’ve said the word ‘cringe’):     After Black Company, I told Sarah that I was thinking about joining the Brexit cast, and she wanted to know what would make my decision more certain. I would’ve liked to read the script beforehand, but sadly couldn’t, so I checked the rehearsal dates and made my decision. Did I later regret my decision? Yes. But we’ll get onto that later. At Lamda the next week, Sarah explained how she was grateful I was joining the cast because my musical knowledge would really help, but little did she know… Before the auditions, Sarah asked me if I could take a look the song ‘We Want the Same as You’ so I

I love Shakespeare. I've loved his work since I was given a children’s edition set of his plays for my 10th birthday, what every 10-year-old dreams of I know, turns out I loved them. So, of course, when the possibility of black company performing a full-length Shakespeare came up, I was more excited than I care to admit.    Unfortunately, I had to miss a lot of the decision-making process due to illness, so I can't really tell you how that went. The first stage of the rehearsal process for Much Ado was auditions. The reason I was so excited that we had chosen Much About Nothing is because Benedick is an absolute dream role of mine, simply because I think it's just so fun to get up on stage and be a complete, well ,  clue’s in the name . I enjoyed the audition session, it was fun to see everyone's different take on the character they were auditioning for, me and Olli had vastly different interpretations of Benedick for example. In this session, we also talked about where