What's happening at YTYT

I am both very happy and very sad as I sit in my chair this evening…Happy because both Journey to X and Encounters have been a success, happy because all the hard work everyone has invested in them has paid off, happy because so many people generously took time out of their lives and travelled a ridiculous distance to come and see them and happy because the amount of lovely things that have been said about our work are enough to overcome any amount of fatigue.   It’s been a brilliant week, hard work but brilliant. However I’ve also got post show sadness and because both Encounters and Journey to X are over it’s double the sadness.   I shall miss so much about both the shows.   It’s like finishing an excellent book…I feel I know both sets of characters so well they’ve become familiar friends and now I have to live without them, at least for a while. So I’ve decided that I’m going to take tonight to wallow in that, wallow and appreciate it.   There’s ...

The last higher education blog for a while...from Tom McNulty My path through higher education has been a little different to the one people normally might choose to follow if they wished to work in the performing arts industry, study for an acting/directing/stage management course or attend a well respected and professional drama school somewhere in London, for example…Although my career ambitions, plans or as others would see them as “dreams”, still remain the same as they have changed over the last 5 years or so. My choice for how I wanted to achieve the right level of training, study, experience and knowledge of said craft and industry, I feel isn’t at all different to what you might get at LAMDA or RADA (granted they are professional institutions that have funding and the highest level of training anyone would wish to receive)…Because of the path I had taken the last few years in order to gain my current qualifications and degree, any kind of decision of where to study, how to s...

Tom helped me put with a blog today... Sooooooooooo, my yew tree blog … Well I’ve done so much Yew Tree related stuff this week that it’s kind of hard to remember what happened. We kicked off the week with a great (as ever) Sapphire session in which we were doing physical theatre. We started of with some games and then started on some techniques. First of these was blind leading. I’ve always enjoyed being led because I trust everyone in that group and that means I can totally relax and enjoy being led. Even when my mum aka Sarah came over to lead me really fast because supposedly I was being cocky!!! Then we did a review of the task and moved on. We then did pebbles on the beach. We did 3 different versions one normal one, one school related and one based on fight. My fave was defo the fight one. I’m just that kind of guy I reckon. Oh I almost forgot. How silly of me. We had a V.I.P visit from the one and only Jack Iredale. He gave us loads of great advice. When we had done that we d...

I realised I hadn't put up this weeks Higher Education blog...sorry this one's by: Caroline Collier University of Nottingham 2006 – 2009 English Studies (Theatre Studies, English Literature, English Language and Medieval Studies) I really enjoyed my course at University. I wanted a course that was diverse and with which I could explore English and Drama in more depth. Each section was weighted equally; there wasn’t more emphasis put on literature about the other 3 areas. I found that, to my surprise, language was my strong point and now I’m living in Italy as an English Language Teacher!   I didn’t want to do a straight Drama degree so this course was perfect for me. The Theatre aspect of the course involved some performance but also analysis of scripts and live theatre. In the third year you had more freedom about what you studied; in each area you could pick a few modules. For Theatre Studies my modules were 20th century plays and Riotous Performance but for English Languag...

Connections week is such a highlight of my year for a whole heap of reasons but one of the main ones is that the intensive nature of it means that there is a tangible and significant journey made during a short amount of time.   The production we have on the Friday bears very little resemblance to what we started with on Monday…the rough cut approximation of the script becomes a developed entity with a shape and a story and a true sense of what it’s about.   It’s a joyous thing indeed… One of the major developments that occurs is in the realm of characters…I’m fascinated by how actors gradually, imperceptibly at first and then with increasing pace and confidence, lose their own idiosyncrasies, their persona’s, their world view…until we stop watching familiar youth theatre members and watch instead the inhabitants of the world of the play.   It’s really hard to pin down what exactly is responsible for this shift…it’s to do with physicality and voice, it’s to ...

Jack and James L teamed up to report in on Journey to X You might think spending all day for a week with the same people doing the same thing every day might get tedious and boring and also make you get at each other’s throats. Luckily this isn't true with the cast of Journey to X. The February half term is usually that week off where members of Yew Tree get time to relax, but for those who choose to do Connections it’s a week of intense rehearsals, finding new things about the play and characters and getting it truly ready for performance.   It has been a tiring process, filled with countless runs of scenes, to fill them with personality and truth within the script, not to mention bringing the energy needed to power through the performance whilst still keeping it entertaining especially in scenes where not a lot may be happening on stage. Discovery is the key word of this week. It can be major things about character, to looking at the different ways a line can be ...

James Budenburg generously blogged about Yew Tree Arts performance of Encounters... I’ll start by saying just how good Encounters is, it’s brilliant and if you haven’t seen it you’re missing out.   It’s completely different to anything else I’ve seen. The start is really nice, probably because of its naturalism; the setting allows you to relate to the characters a bit more than you can do in a theatre, well in my opinion anyway. The main ideas are introduced in the first setting, which draws your attention into all the others. Just realised I hadn’t mentioned that it’s in the Hepworth. But yeah, it moves right around the Hepworth. Which brings me to my favourite moment in the entire piece, this is really harsh because the whole play is so deep, but there is one line in which the art-loving Jed describes the reason he likes one of the sculptures merely because of its colour. I think the line is so good because of the characterisation though, as there is a scene nearer the beginni...