What's happening at YTYT

  My Blog   Considering how much of a hectic year this has been for some, I think it is important to write down our thoughts and feelings. This is my first blog for Yew Tree Youth Theatre so I would first like to mention about in January I took my Grade 6 LAMDA exam and came out with a distinction! Hanging on my wall is my medal which I am so proud of with my two speeches I did. My first speech was To Be or not to Be monologue performed famously by Hamlet in Hamlet by Shakespeare, it was a challenge to work out what it meant so for anyone who doesn’t understand old English monologues there are plenty of old English translations that helped me answer my questions a lot. My second speech was Chaos where I described a scenario of a butterfly at the train station where I essentially had to decide what the dramatic effect was of the monologue.    Participating in To Write A Monster with Gold Company later in June was an interesting experience with such talented actors that I was so lucky to

  What a year. I’ve never actually written a blog for YTYT before, I’ve always been a little afraid - although I don’t know what of. Given that everyone at Yew Tree are the kindest people I’ve ever met. So here’s to my first ever YTYT blog! It’s a long one, the whole blog comes in at an outstanding 2522 words. So, TLDR: I love YTYT and everything related. I love every person at YTYT. Everything about it has a special place in my heart forever. Thank you Yewtree, thank you Gold company and especially thank you Sarah. ^There are some special messages to everyone in Gold Company at the bottom if you’d rather not have to read it all to get to them     When I was writing up a plan for the order of this blog, I had wanted to pick a highlight from 2023 and talk about it here. However upon reflection over my year, I honestly could not pick a highlight if you forced me to. Not because the year has been horrible, on the contrary. YTYT has been utterly fabulous this year. I’ve had my own personal

  NODA summer school has quickly become one of my favourite weeks of the year and I’m already looking forward to next year.   Arriving there was terrifying; I had all these worries about being in the right place and would I enjoy this. So seeing Sarah’s face at the entrance allowed a little ease to the worry, not all but some. All that worrying disappeared after I had met some amazing and friendly people at the bar and then our stage manager tutor Mark Shayle for an evening introduction. Knowing what to expect and what I had to look forward to helped increase the excitement over the anxiety. Everyone there was so lovely, welcoming and encouraging and I know I have made some life long friends.    The course was another type of amazing, I’ve learned so much in the space of the week, from the role of a stage manager to running a technical rehearsal and calling a show, and I know that there is plenty I can use in the future. To mix my week up even further, I took part in some of the evenin

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

So, it’s time to write my leavers blog. Here goes nothing and I know some tears will be shed writing this. Like Sarah said it’s an end of an era. I started Yewtree at 7 years old, as I joined through my mum seeing Yewtree on Facebook, as I was wanting to start acting, and so she signed me up. Later I joined the dance school and did Peter Pan, along with Sarah. So, I joined Jade Company, making loads of friends, Eliana, Kirsty, Lyla and Violet and later people like Estelle, Orla and Kenzie. I can’t really remember any plays from back then, but I remember one. The Grinch which we did, and the boy who played the Grinch was sick that day, so he couldn’t perform. But Tom saved the day, and we were able to perform. I also had to sing away in a manger, first time singing in a play (when Sarah didn’t have to force it out of me). Another memory of Jade company I have is at Christmas we would make our own versions of Christmas songs, and my group were given the 12 days of Christmas, and we made

  So I started writing this literally fifteen minutes after I walked out the door of my last drama session. Which is a slightly horrifying concept that I've still not really admitted aloud (it's now been more than a month). I've been coming to drama sessions with Sarah at least once a week for nine years of my life, so I don't think it's at all a stretch to say Yew Tree has had a fair hand in raising me, and now that it's done it feels weirdly anti-climatic(?). It's just a normal Thursday, nothing especially memorable has happened, but it's the last time I'll ever be coming to drama regularly and it's the first time the thought of leaving for university and growing up (*shudder*) has actually felt real . Yew Tree has been a constant part of my childhood - I honestly cannot remember a time when I haven't come to sessions and I can say confidently that I've always adored every minute of them. I turned 18 recently, and finished sixth form

Gosh. I can’t quite believe I’m writing this – sat at my desk at work experiencing the post-show blues of what is my penultimate show as a member of Black company, psyching myself up for the fact that in a few short weeks it’ll all be over. I  was first introduced to Yew Tree and Sarah via LitFest and my good friend Chloe at what was A Very Weird Time™️, both personally and globally. Namely, mid-2020, waist-deep in Covid lockdown shenanigans and up to my eyeballs in navigating Life Post-Cult™️. When lockdown came to an end and I first set my foot into WYTDC in September, I found a refuge. Three years on, in the insanely busy world that is my life, Yew Tree is still that same refuge. It’s a bubble of joy and laughter and creativity in the storm of the world outside. And despite the days where it reaches 5:30pm on a Thursday and I’m contemplating whether I can be bothered schlepping over to Ossett to go to Black, I know every time that I will leave feeling so much better for it. Yew Tree

  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,

This is, nominally, an NT Connections blog, and whilst there is much to say about the experience, it has been a little hard to work out exactly what I personally can write that wouldn’t be better coming from a cast member or Sarah. I was the assistant director; whilst it feels fair to say that I have contributed to the show in some way, I was neither a direct participant nor the orchestrator. I didn’t run the sound, nor the lights, nor did I call the show. I do feel that I left a mark on the show, though, in directing some scenes, and working with the actors. I hope it was better for my involvement - it was, after all, a remarkably good performance - but for the purposes of this blog I think it would be best to restrict the scope to what it has meant to me. About 18 months ago, I was kicking around a can of early-to-mid twenties malaise. I’m sure it will be familiar to some reading this: the acute sense of “this is it for 40 years, then I retire?” This was the immediate wake of the pan