What's happening at YTYT

Emma (Fretwell) here, writing a guest blog for this week. After a two week long deprivation from everyone’s favourite Youth Theatre, we were back in force. Well, kind of. What with Sarah and Gemma stuck in Cyprus, everything could have been a little up in the air. BUT, seeing as Yew Tree has some seriously amazing and responsible people, everything just ticked over nicely. All the sessions, as far as I’m aware, went ahead on Saturday. So this is a thank you to Rob and Alice, because Mili said that the Red company was “brilliant and lots of fun”. Bit of news; I left the Crimson company before Easter. Because I have to do something for Duke of Edinburgh later in the afternoon on Saturdays, I have moved to Gold company to accommodate it. Even though I will miss Gemma, Sam and everyone at Crimson an absurd amount, I have never felt more welcome anywhere. The funny thing about it was that most barely noticed I was new to the group, and as Danny put it ‘already part of the wallpaper’. The se...

This week has been the most ridiculous week…from the blissful retreat in a beautiful Cypriot villa….to the uncertainty of not knowing when I would see home…and where I would be staying in the meantime…to the excess of the cruise life (an existence where there is excess everywhere to an extent I have never experienced) to the frustration of delay after delay after delay. When at last I returned home, very late last night, the extremes of emotion didn’t stop…so glad to be home…so grateful to everyone who has worked so hard to keep everything going for me…a sense of the overwhelming amount of things that now need to be done and then the added difficulty of finding out that while I was away that my family has suffered a genuinely sad bereavement… This means my Sunday is being spent in a whirlwind of emotions, tasks and states of mind…however one thing is standing out as a beacon of positivity in all of this… that I get to go to Youth Theatre next week…lots…I get to see Sparkleshark again…...

Aaron is one of the kind people who came through with a blog in my hour of need... This is just a quick blog to say how brilliant Yew Tree is. For over a week Sarah and Gemma were on holiday, as I’m sure you’re all aware, so it was up to people such as Danny, Rob and Callum to run the majority of the sessions. I think it goes to show how great a mentor Sarah is that Sarah can go away knowing that they will be more than capable of taking care of the sessions and not just take care of them but to have really brilliant, productive sessions as well. I wasn’t in either of Rob’s or Callum’s but if they were anything like Danny’s then there is no doubt in my mind that they were brilliant. It made me realise that part of the reason that Yew Tree is so brilliant and capable of performing such brilliant pieces of theatre is partly to do with the faith that Sarah has in us that we can do it and every time Sarah gives us one of her speeches just before a performance we believe that we can because ...

This week it might seem as if there is nothing happening in the way of youth theatre to the outside eye but as ever when the whole thing winds down for a while the artists go into planning and preparation mode in order to ensure that the following term runs as smoothly and creatively as possible. There’s a great deal of preparation going on for the regional performance of Sparkleshark…only today I received an email from the Brewery Arts Centre saying how much they were looking forward to our visit…coaches have been booked and accommodation has been sorted…it should be a weekend to remember… Last week there were numerous meetings by the artists of Yew Tree and as a result the journey for each group’s summer journey is theoretically laid out for the term…Green, Black, Purple, Ruby and Ivory will be gearing up for the Shakespeare festival in June…Crimson will go into rehearsals for a production of Fragments with two additional and original monologues. Gold and Sapphire are going to get t...

Alices brilliant Shakespeare blog everybody Shake•speare ʃeɪk spɪər [sheyk-speer] –noun William, (“the Bard”; “the Bard of Avon” ), 1564–1616, English poet and dramatist. The negative connotations the word Shakespeare holds in the eyes of so many people is mental. And one of the reasons is simply because he was knocking about quite a while ago. At school from year 9 most of us have no choice about whether we want to read Shakespeare or not; so when we begin that section of our studies the teacher usually begins with a disclaimer such as: ‘i know you think it’s boring but...’ or ‘he was an important man’. Of course, in my experience there’s rarely discussion about why he was important or even why they assume we think it’s boring. And yes, in fairness there are deadlines and lesson plans to take into account but really...10 minutes chatting about something that won’t earn you any extra marks...get over it. For the past 2 months? Maybe...something like that anyway. We have been work-shopp...

Danny Bell is our guest blogger this week...hurray for that... The Writer’s forum is absolutely sensational. One of the things Yew Tree does superbly is capitalize on the fact that people delight in one another. If you’re an employee of St. Anne’s it’s likely you’ve heard a point made by Sarah along the lines of ‘…we like to see how other people live their lives…’ This is so true. As a species we are curious of one another; and when a similarity is discovered we feel secure, instantly validated and comforted by the fact that someone else feels the same things we do. Alternatively you could argue that some of the worst things that we as people have done to each other has stemmed from the human response to difference. We feel isolated, scared…it’s something we don’t have a knowledge of, it’s not in our spectrum of thought and our behaviours from that point can be ruthlessly out of character. However imagine if you could take away the fear response, the isolation…what if you’re already pa...

On Wednesday I went to the writers forum – a sort of holiday special edition of the writers forum - and had a ball…it was so lovely to be a participant in something…as you can imagine, my job means that I am pretty much most of the time out at the front, or in the centre, either way I’m leading…sometimes on my own and sometimes with the brilliant people I have working with me but regardless it’s all a bit of a responsibility. A responsibility I enjoy but all the same… I digress…so I got to the session…I didn’t have to prepare anything, I didn’t have to be there early…I didn’t have to be there at all…I had chosen to be…all of these little things were refreshingly liberating in themselves but then I was treated to 90 minutes of writing for pleasure…what a brilliant way to spend an evening… I think apart from all the things that I’ve already mentioned the most outstanding bonus of the session was being able to respond to someone else’s ideas…and not having to worry if they were happy wit...

It was hard to imagine last week what a week without Sparkleshark would feel like but in fact it’s been pretty theatrically rich…which is a good thing as the come down after such a wonderful experience can leave me feeling a little low… Firstly the aftermath of Sparkleshark brought wonderful blogs…a record amount of them, lovely comments and the photographs which look stunning…so that was good in itself… Then I got to see two pieces of theatre, which always inspires me. Number one was a two hander show in Sheffield, “There’s only 1 Wayne Matthews.” This was an odd piece as although it was well conceived and engagingly performed it didn’t seem to be quite brave enough. The intention was right and the subject was good (friendship, racism, ambition, belonging) but it was let down by a script that didn’t want to commit itself to much to the things it was there to address. The second performance was “Comedy of Errors” at the Royal Exchange. Firstly the theatre is a brilliant space…I ha...

by the brilliant Jodie Nicholson This is my first blog so go easy guy's eh? Sparkleshark and Karamazoo, where to start?.... I couldn't imagine a harder task than Sarah and Danny had on their hands directing two casts, and three for Karamazoo to boot. When I was asked to do sound I was like yeah sure!...whatever.. I'm there. I'd probably got a bit cocky after doing Conversations and Musicians, thought sound was a walk in the park....how wrong I was. Sparkleshark was well established when I toddled in to press play, so it was really strange to walk into something that was fully formed. I had missed the process of it all ,and that to me is how I identify what needs what. This actually did keep me up at night, I felt un-prepared because I did'nt know the play and I'd only seen it performed by both casts once. I scribbled down cues and hoped for the best. I needn't have worried. The depiction of the characters, the setting and the timing of the lines were spot on...