What's happening at YTYT

“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you,
 trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our 
players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.” Hamlet At the moment the Black Company are getting their heads around Shakespeare, namely Comedy of Errors…it’s a big undertaking as not only have we set ourselves the challenge of producing our first full length Shakespeare, we have also decided to perform it in the round…but then we like a challenge… We are at that point in rehearsals where we have looked at the whole play.    Actors are getting a sense of their characters: where they fit within the story, the relationships between characters and the environments the events of the play take place in.   We are also getting a sense of the size and scale of the undertaking… What I love about Comedy of Errors is it’s unpretentious admittance of simplicity.   It’s a farce, a gambol, a comic adventure.   It’s full of...

We are getting closer and closer to the extravaganza that will be Flock to Ossett and so a group of YTYT went back on the streets - well town square really - of Ossett this weekend to make sure everyone knows about it...Jack blogged about the experience... Promoting something is very hard. Sometimes people don’t want to listen to you. They brush you off, or as has sometimes happened in previous Flock to Ossett promotions, deliberately avoided walking near you.   Yesterday though, was one of the funnest mornings in a long while. And a brilliant promotional event to boot. 11 of us were in Ossett centre...square...market...there were a few names thrown about. We were dressed as old time newspaper sellers and had free promotional papers to give to the public as well as banners explaining what we were promoting. We met outside Eller. Coffee and after a quick introduction from Ralph we were off into town ready to give out newspapers to any and all people we came across.   I lear...

A little while ago Jack Iredale launched his degree project in community theatre by blogging for us...the next 3 weeks of his work with Sapphire are documented in this blog... Weeks 2 and 3 Sometimes, when creating something, you don’t know where to start. Other times, you have an idea, but don’t know where to take it. Or an end point that you don’t know how to reach. After the first week, however, I pretty much had all of those things. It’s the bit in the middle that I was lacking. I tried looking at character first. We started with some creative tasks (30 second movies, a group favourite) to get our heads in the game. Looking back, I would’ve liked to have done some more in-depth look at creating characters before jumping into the next section, but as they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing.   Essentially, what I tried to do was get the group into the mindset of one of the people that inspired them, to be able to show others why they were inspirational. I gave the group the ta...

I’ve been considering this blog for over 24 hours and have only just been brave enough to sit down and write it.   Why? You might ask…what’s so difficult about this weeks blog, you write one every week?   I think it’s the challenge of trying to capture the enormity of something that on the surface of things probably seemed quite ordinary. This weekend the Hepworth, Wakefield celebrated it’s first birthday, it also celebrated having over 500,000 visitors in its first year and added being shortlisted for the arts fund prize to the many nominations and awards it has attained.   This in itself is truly impressive, that Wakefield could be the home of something so significant, so popular and so successful. As someone who gets to work there, who has staged countless performances there, who visits so often it’s easy to take it for granted. Yesterday Yew Tree Youth Theatre had the privilege of performing in the gallery Two very different performances but each not...

Ellen from Gold Company ladies and gentlemen... In comparison to many of the Yew Tree veterans at Gold Company, having been for two years, I am somewhat of a newcomer. Nevertheless, as life becomes scarier and my time with gold is drawing closer to its end...the more and more the fantastically crazy and wonderful people I see every Saturday morning are making me not want to leave. Every week we welcome more new members to Gold, and it makes me think back to my first ever session at Yew Tree…that terrifying moment you walk into the room full of strangers…the long wait before the dreaded moment you have to say your best and worst…the first improvised performance…but soon enough you become part of the family that is Yew Tree. You spend the whole week looking forward to Saturday mornings, you develop new friendships with people of all ages, and you even start to think of your best and worst earlier than two minutes before your turn! Yew Tree becomes part of your life, and it is most defi...

With the three brilliant guest blogs on offer this week I’m going to keep mine short and sweet… This week the Yew Tree Youth Theatre has been the feel good factor of my days…it is every week but I’ve appreciated it more this week.   I’ve had some challenging days – half of Airedale’s year 7 in the Hepworth as an example – and this cough that I’ve whined about in best and worst whenever I got the chance (did I mention that it’s pulled every muscle in my body and won’t damn well go away.) However despite all this, every YTYT session has been a pleasure – from the antics of Orange to the hilarity and cleverness of Gold to the fact that whatever challenge I hit Black with they rise to beautifully.   Whether it’s first thing Saturday or last thing Thursday YTYT literally makes my day…so thank you for that…the only sad thing is that there was no Sapphire in the mix…but I get to put that right tomorrow so all is well…

The wonderful Gemma with some thoughts in her head from her week at YTYT... The Inspiration   Anyone who comes to Yew Tree Youth Theatre knows that each session starts with a formulaic pattern of Best and Worst but that's where the formula ends because for everyone in that space they all have lots of life happening outside those doors...exams, stress with family, friends, watching Avengers (lots of watching The Avengers) what they had for breakfast and often 'no news' (or none they want to share or think is news worthy)   And we respond, we are sympathetic, we laugh along, we share parts of ourselves so others don't feel silly, we even come up fighting someone's corner if they need us. So this is where the formula ends and we begin to explore that all the people in the space are there for more than the idea of doing drama...and although we're a youth theatre we are are enabling young people to sculpt themselves into the best shape they choose to be...be it doc...

Mel was inspired by Gold's session to write our second guest blog... So exams are starting and Gold company seems to get smaller each week (besides our lovely 3 new starters today).   It's such a relief to know that Yew Tree will always support the fact that its a rather stressy time of year for a lot of people, and Sarah, Gemma and Danny are all here to either accept you can't attend for a while or let Yew Tree be a place to let off some steam and forget and exams for a few hours.   Today there has been so much laughter, from COCONUTS and Michael and Ed falling over in foot stomp, Dillons face in street cafe, mafia and the 5 brilliant short plays for our creative task, where each one was simply as entertaining as the next. Having less time to create them definately gave us more pressure but getting to decide the book title of our choice also gave equal amounts of inspiration to get ourselves started and I really enjoyed working with people I haven't worked with befor...

First guest blogger of the week James Budenberg with the first of what will be a regular slot as the writers prepare for their summer festival So I’m pretty new to writers. It’s something I always wanted to try and I didn’t know whether it would work for me or not. Turns out it does though which is nice. It’s quite weird because although It’s not the most serious of places everyone takes what they write extremely seriously and that’s why I think the festival we’re going to put together is going to be so exciting. An example is how the group is so different, there are some people who just come to writers and some people that get involved in everything Yew Tree does, and that gives the group a really nice feel. We were coming up with ideas for the festival on Wednesday and everyone there had such different ideas, ranging from whole novels to kitchen sink plays. That’s why I reckon the festival will reflect the essence of our group, and that’s that sometimes when you put very different ...

What a weekend… As the photo’s, comments and status’s have shouted loud clear it was our final performances of Journey to X at the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal.   It was quite simply brilliant.   Such a wonderful time spent in the company of wonderful people.   Made to feel so at home in a lovely theatre, having the opportunity to work on such a clever and insightful play, seeing actors achieve things in their performances that they hadn’t reached before and then enjoying watching the game of Kings that is That’s Out. It’s so sad that it’s over, so sad…and I will miss it, but it’s left such a legacy.   Everybody who took part has emerged a better, brighter, richer person as a result.   Not one person involved remains untouched by the experience. I have watched as both the process and the performance has invested greater understanding, skill, sensitivity and empathy in every member of the company.   As I said minutes before the performance began...

As has become the tradition we have a blog by all the actors who performed at the National Connections Festival at Kendal this weekend...enjoy!  Jack So…connections 2012…it’s been brilliant. Bit sad, cos you know…some peoples last connections.   But it’s been fantastic. The performance of journey to x was at such a high level…can’t really articulate my thoughts well about it…just want to say brilliant loads of times, but that would get redundant. It’s been fun, seeing old and new faces here at Kendal. It’s been n amazing journey to get here. Only done connections twice, it’s been brill both times   Hope for more awesome Kendal times in the future. Alice Connections 2012. Oh my God it is so easy to underestimate the work that went on in a little dance school in Ossett every Saturday afternoon for what feels like forever to make Journey to X   …if you are in ANY doubt about doing connections ever, ever, then do it. I’ve been involved in as man...