What's happening at YTYT

Thursday night was brilliant because I got to hear Alien for the first time. For those of you that don’t know what Alien is, it’s the play I’ve written that the Black Company will perform at Nostell Priory. The story line is simplistic – An alien lands on Earth and meets people at Nostell Priory…so it’s not going to tax peoples narrative understanding…like many of the Nostell Priory plays and there’s a few of them now…it’s the characters that matter…what they learn about themselves and each other through the course of the play…and it’s the characters that create the entertainment. However back to the reason why Thursday was brilliant…there’s nothing better than being there as a cast respond to what you’ve written for the first time…obviously as long as that response is positive which it was on Thursday. I don’t know about other writers but when I write plays the characters and situation takes up such a large part of my head until the play is complete…I know the characters so much mo...

And Holly has blogged about the summer preparation for the Christmas shows... So just before the term finished we started devising our Christmas plays, and this is something I look forward to every year cause it's something that you can see being worked out, and there's an end product which is always amazing. I've done 2 of these Christmas plays now, and the first time I did it, I loved how the company got input. The plays that I'd been involved in before always consisted of being given a script, learning your lines, and then performing it - which was great don't get me wrong - but there's always a personal touch to Yew Tree Christmas plays. Things you came up with one session and which made you laugh cropping up in your script or ideas that you felt really proud of being put in ha :) That's what I love. Last year I did Beauty and the Beast with the Sapphire company and it was just one of the best things I've done and probably the most productive... My ...

Emma blogs about her guest visit to the Black Company... Hello Yew Tree! Emma Fretwell here, again. I feel like I blog a lot, even though I don’t really. On Thursday evening, I went to the Black Company session to do the read-through of Alien, because the 14-17 Nostell Priory summer school won’t be running and there was a part that couldn’t be filled in Alien…So I’m filling it. And I couldn’t be happier that I am! The session was mental. In my life I have never experienced a more passionate game of Mafia. Oh, the paranoia... hahaa. Anyway, Alien: it’s brilliant. Hilariously funny and just a farce all ways around, Alien is possibly the most bizarre (and fantastic) script I have ever read. However, aside from the fact that an alien just happens to land in Nostell Priory and wreak havoc, the play is illuminating in terms of human nature and, if you choose to take it for more than face value, rather thought provoking! What’s more, I think everyone should definitely come and watch it. Just ...

So we have reached the end of term and a ridiculously exciting term it was. It’s odd because nowadays the Youth Theatre never completely closes down…Black Company and Ivory continue through the holidays and in addition there are podcasts being recorded and summer schools to enjoy. These summer activities become like little pulses of energy that keep the Youth Theatre going until the main body of it rejoins after a break… However there is still a sense of finality at the end of the summer term and therefore an impetus to look back over the last three months…so much to look back on. In one term Yew Tree Youth Theatre have produced 4 podcasts…performed at Clarke Hall, Beam and the Hepworth. The list of plays we’ve performed includes Fragments, Puff the Magic Dragon, Responses and a host of Shakespearean gems. We’ve devised new work, created scripts in preparation for the Autumn term, played countless games, developed a myriad of skills, welcomed new member and started the process of ...

Imogen from Crimson blogged on her response to Fragments... Fragments...I was asked to write a blog about fragments, What can I say its a very deep play and you have to look between the lines because every line you hear you can relate it with something to do with your life. It's about love and hope, hope to live in a world so precariously poised. The relationships in the play are all very different, from true love to regretting telling a person you normally share. And as you watch the play you feel for the people with what they say. If i may say so myself we put alot of hard work into it and i think it showed.

Katie Crookes from the Gold Company has blogged on her work experience experience Two weeks of Yew Tree and only one word to describe it ... WOW! I've seen so much of Yew Tree I didn’t even know happened and I have met so many lovely people that are involved. It has challenged me but in good ways and has been an absolute pleasure to get to do work experience here :) Well it all started with me holding a boom but by the end of it i had the confidence to run a game During the 2weeks I've heard and seen things that have made me think in different ways and see things from other views and learnt so much more about myself and just learnt things in general. Now I will list some of the highlights of the past 2 weeks first starting with Ruby Company they are mental but so much fun, performing “ You Will Go Far”, meeting Green and Black company, watching “The Bear Hunt” which was just absolutely brilliant! I also watched a number of different rehearsals which have been quite funny, I hel...

Vienna from the Crimson Company with her first blog... I've only been part of Yew Tree for around 2 months and my first production is to be Fragments. Learning lines is challenging as they can be a little bitty and are difficult to say, but its so worth it when you see the end result. It is fantastic and looks very professional, I love the emotions you can put into the lines and monologues and really like rehearsing. It has been hard to get here as a team and it can be very time consuming to learn the lines but I felt that anytime I had an issue (e.g. learning lines, or not knowing where to be) then I felt Gemma and Sam or my fellow Yew Tree attendees would solve it instantly. That is why I love Yew Tree and am so happy I joined, as now I know the talent that we can all produce when pushed. I mean some of the people in my crimson group are excellent performers, with wonderful colourful personalities. We also all work like one big team. Not only have I learned what I can produce w...

If last week was the vacuous blog this week I’m going for the stream of consciousness blog…so get ready for stupidly long sentences…and I’m doing that because I want to get on with writing the 12 Dancing Princesses script (see the Yew Facebook page for the title debate for this) So this is what I wanted to document…as a writer one of the biggest challenges you have, is finding something you want to write about and that need to and want to write about whatever it is, has to be strong enough to justify not doing all the other practical real life things you should be doing and strong enough to overcome the paranoia of putting the finished piece out in public to be judged…and don’t be mistaken that’s how it feels…you spend solitary hours creating something you like and then you have to put it in front of people to read or to watch and each time you do that…as in with each individual it’s like waiting for that axe to fall as the reader or audience member experiences it from their perspectiv...

Aaron from Green company has blogged also...first person from Carleton to do so which makes him a trailblazer... Danny asked me to do a blog about this weeks session at Yew Tree, so I best get started I suppose. Its been 2 nearly 3 weeks now since we performed Comedy of Errors at Clarke Hall, so we've had 2 chill out sessions now with just playing games and then doing the card picking thing (the ones with the scene line and location) that's gotta be included in your play. Rob was back from his New York holiday as well as having Hannah and Katie doing work experience with our group. Once again it was amazingly funny and the best part of my week like every week. First off we had best and worse, where we were introduced to Hannah and Katie. We had a few warm ups and then went onto the games. We also did the bench, which is one of my personal favourites as you get to see individual peoples personality's and how they approach the bench and really you just have a laugh. The rando...

Hannah was work experience this week which means she gets "volunteered for the blog..." Firstly, before I go and babble on for a while… Yew Tree is BRILLIANT. Everyone knew that anyway, but I thought I’d best say it. Well it’s been a busy week of work experience, and if I’m as tired as I am after 5 days, I can’t imagine how tired everyone who works for Yew Tree must be on a regular basis. Tiredness done with, I’ve absolutely loved every minute… well saying I loved mopping Sarah Thomas dance school after it flooded is a lie, because mopping isn’t that fun. But it was brilliant to see how quick Yew Tree pulled together a little army of moppers to help clear up. I’ve seen sooo many different sides of Yew Tree this week, there’s loads of stuff that Yew Tree do that not everyone’s aware of, it’s mental. I’ve been to 2 ‘You will go far’ workshops, and they were both so different, but so interesting, and I found myself singing along to the music in the performance, although shouting...

Here comes one of the most vacuous blogs of my career…(incidentally the blog has now been going for 16 months and I write one a week so that’s a lot of blogs to compare it to…) Are you ready for it? Well here goes…I liked the round of applause at the end of the Hepworth performance on Thursday…that’s it…see I told you it was vacuous… I liked it because it was warm and heartfelt…I liked it because it told me that the audience got what the piece was about, that they understood the writing, that they appreciated the performance and that they’d enjoyed the cumulative effects of all of those things combined. I liked it because it was from lots of pairs of hands. It was also enhanced by the acoustics we’d battled to manage vocally in the rehearsals and the performance…I liked it because it was from a mixture of staunch fans and people entirely unfamiliar with our work and I liked it because it was backed up with so many positive words from so many people. I put writing this off a day as I...

Hurray for Jack Iredale...and his review of our Hepworth Performance this week... So as many of you know, we at Yew Tree (excuse the rhyme) were commissioned to do a piece for the new Hepworth art gallery, that big grey building near the church on the water. So we cracked on, and devised some excellent scenes. Rehearsed a few Saturday mornings at Thornes Park and once at The Hepworth, which once you get inside is fantastic. The rooms are just enormous white caverns with windows looking at Wakefield, and filled with nothing, it’s going to be a shame to actually put art in, though the rooms themselves aren’t that… acoustically brilliant. So it got to the night of the performance. We arrived to get in a quick rehearsal or two before the presentations that kicked off the evening started. Now, we were in separate rooms for our little scenes, kind of like we were the pieces of art for the evening. As such, I don’t really know how the audience reacted to the first 3 scenes beyond the occasion...

This bonus blog was sent by Chris...who I think holds the record for being the youngest contributors...he's certainly one of them anyway...thank you Chris... Okay Yew Tree have asked me to write a blog about the Shakespeare festival, so here we go! No rain and bright sunshine made it a perfect weekend for a picnic at Clarke Hall. Loads of great performances that weekend but I've been told to focus on one. The Tempest, which was performed by the Purple Company and extremely well directed by Gemma, Sam and Stacey. It's mostly a piece of physical theatre although there are the odd lines here and there starting off with the boat scene we create the illusion of a storm while a few people deliver lines. As the ship is about to crash screams are heard as the boat formation begins to disassemble and different pieces of physical theatre come to life until the performance ends with an epilogue. I believe Clarke Hall was the perfect venue for the Shakespeare festival as the settings u...

This week, this happy, successful week…full of such good news… has caused me to reflect on many things. For the purpose of this blog I’m going to document two of the reflections that have stood out to me…and although the reason for them standing out hasn’t been youth theatre related the thought process they inspired bounced me straight back to reflecting on all thing YTYT… The first point of reflection is a whole thing about comfort zones…I was at a high school on Wednesday doing some work with year 10’s. The work was very much in the spirit of the stuff we do week, in week out, but for 99% of the workshop participants (there was a notable exception) it was very, very new…never the less they engaged…some people readily others with greater reticence…but regardless of the degree they all engaged in some way. The staff talked about how impressed they were that people were working outside of their comfort zones and this made me think about the fact that Youth Theatre members…or at least ...

Kate is this weeks blogster upholding the tradition of the work experience youth theatre member being responsible for the guest blog... Well... I really don’t know where to start in explaining how much I’ve enjoyed work experience this week. Hang on, before I go on I need to say; Yew Tree is amaaaazing! And thanks to all of Yew Tree, my week has been a week to remember. I’ve spent most my week visiting schools, primarily with Sarah and Danny who I have to say are so helpful and enthusiastic in everything they do and they have made me really enjoy my week. Visiting the schools, which has been very interesting and meeting many year 6’s who I’m sure will reach their potential with their motivation and personalities. The experience of working with young pupils has given me a great insight in what I may like to do as a future career. The amount of enthusiasm and energy that Yew Tree continuously has has inspired me from the day I started the Youth Theatre on Monday nights. Each workshop and...