What's happening at YTYT

Step 1:             Make sure your planning is in place, meet with visionaries who had the idea of a litfest in the first place and the enabling and wise writer in residence.   Engage the time and interest of potential participants for workshops, writing and performances…talk to primary schools about engaging with their pupils…plan what you hope are going to be a series of thought provoking, word catalystic workshops… …hope, a lot, that everything is going to fit into place Step 2:             Spend an interesting, inspiring and creative Saturday at a beautiful, historic building and its grounds facilitating workshops with talented Youth Theatre members in the morning and be part of a creative workshop with young writers of Wakefield in the afternoon led by the wise writer in residence   Step 3:             Spend a significant amount of time drawing strange not to scale diagrams and maps of the beautiful and historic building and its grounds to find a way o

Mirv talks about his week at Yew Tree This week when I took my first step into Black Company, I felt like I could finally get started on creating and being a part of brilliant performances that would be performed in many places. I have seen many performances from Black Company. It really draws me in because of the dark and mystic performances they create. I think starting has taken me that extra journey to achieve my dream of become an actor, because I think it will push me to my limits and polish my weak points in acting. Being a person who loves physical theatre I felt that I could really improve my skill in that at black company, because it is a harder working place and it has high skilled people that would help me. It is a totally different environment to the other companies and I find it very welcoming, as are the people there. I really like the fact that we have the chance to put our input into the performances, because it gives me a chance to give my ideas out to the team. I f

I had a great day at the opening of the Wakefield Lit Fest yesterday.   A full day of making, creating, writing and performing at the lovely Orangery with a combination of young people from Wakefield, Yew Tree artists and the very generous James Nash - a writer from Leeds.   It was a genuine celebration of the potential of words to engage, entertain, enlighten and en-trance. The lit fest has brought to light the avid interest there is in Wakefield for all things poetry, plays and pages.   We all knew it was there but it perhaps hadn’t had a chance to shout above everything else that’s going on in quite this way.   It’s a week of open mics, readings, films, performance and sharing and there are so many diverse things to enjoy.   As someone in constant contact with words as both a reader and writer I’m delighted to have the opportunity to be inspired by people who share my passion. One of the themes that came across in yesterdays workshops, which had actually already pl

Beth blogged about yesterdays Lit Fest morning workshop... So we spent yesterday at the wonderful Orangery…it was fun to explore it as I’ve never been there before…ask me why? I don’t actually know but anyway I enjoyed being part of it and the creative tasks were MINT…Although it was a bit hard coming up with a story but did we succeed.. erm YES…I think the Orangery has so much potential and the setting was just lovely…well not just lovely but you know...ha! The cave thingy ma jig was a bit intense but I think that was the message and even worse when the trains went over the bridge ahahha HELLLL!   Anyway feel like I’m rambling...but if you do have chance to go and see the Orangery its grounds are fantastic and James is a lovely person to meet too, all in all LOVELY!!! And so did Katie Well, today was my first ever session at the Orangery. Its weird to think I've never even heard of it before until I came today. Its just such a calm little haven almost apart

There has been something that has stood out to me throughout this week in the various rehearsals I’ve directed, training I’ve facilitated and exchanges I’ve been part of. The something on my mind is a quality that I think sets YTYT people apart from your average group of individuals.   You wouldn’t think this particular thing would be such a big deal, in that it’s something that you would imagine the majority of people would just have or just be but it sadly isn’t the case. I often find myself in situations when I’m working with new or unfamiliar groups where I’m faced with a group of people so threatened or resentful about being in a learning environment that they are completely closed to learning.   They’ve often got locked into patterns of thought or behaviour in order to cope with a challenging world and the thought of reviewing those and adapting is too unnerving to even contemplate.   It’s such a shame because in the case of the particular group I trained

Alice now safely ensconced at Manchester Met to begin her actor training reflected on her 13 years at YTYT before she went... This blog has taken me so long to try and form in my head because there are so many things I want to say about something that has been in my life since I was 7 years old. So, in no particular order... Vision / Sparkleshark / Twas the Night Before Christmas / A Vampire Story / Shooting Truth / Post 40 / The Myth / Journey to X / Fragments / Celebrity / Invisible / Cinderella / Miners Memorial Service - Selby / Alien / Young Roots /Halloween at Nostel - Amelia’s Story / Spirts of the Landscape / Robin Hood / Sleeping Beauty / Shakespeare festival 1 / Shakespeare Festival 2 / Classics at Clarke Hall / The musicians / A Christmas Carol / The Heights / Maybe this time / Can’t Stand up for Falling down / The Worn Out Shoes / Sandal Castle / Blackout / Duel / Princess Blankets / Lost Happy Endings / The Comedy of Errors / The Chrysalids / After Juliet / Responses at

I have had a brilliant few days…I spent Thursday and Friday at the Worlds Together Conference.   It was held at the Tate Modern and was organised by Tate, The RSC, The British Museum and The National Theatre…a pretty heady combination of Arts organisations…their ambition was to bring together artists and teachers and thinkers who are passionate about young people engaging with the arts… What I did… I listened to lots of people, who know a lot about what the arts can do and does to promote the development of young people into happy, creative, thoughtful, confident individuals…some of them were artists, some of them teachers, some neuroscientists, some anthropologists… I took part in workshops with associate directors of The National Theatre and with the head of movement in the RSC which was nice…a little odd being a participant instead of leading, but you would have been proud of me…I tried hard and took part in discussions and everything… I attended a symposium where p

Amy Walton is our guest blogger this week.. Today was the first day of what I think is the best term at Yew Tree, the term where magic happens in regards to christmas shows.  I love this term because it means we are starting a very exciting Christmas play! We started the morning by doing best and worst with everyones stories of not only the last week but their holidays too! We then had some games it felt like so long since I had last played Ninja Warrior and Sun and Moon. We then started staging the script this what I feel is the best part because the script comes to live and you see the story unravel, we did the first scene and the prologue and I am so excited for the up and coming weeks because that means we get to do more work on the script. I also enjoyed doing the first scene because we put music to the work we had done and it helped us focus on what our characters were going to be played like

The annual autumn goodbyes have started and will unfortunately keep going for the next few weeks.   This week Natalie said her last goodbyes to Yew Tree as by our next session she’ll be safely ensconced at St Andrews studying Maths and Spanish and Rob who’s been back for the summer disappears to foreign climes.   This is a sad and brilliant time for the Youth Theatre as although I’m sad that we lose people it is so very brilliant that they are embarking on the next stage of what I am sure will be a great adventure.   This year we have YTYT members going to study English, Music, Sociology, Theoretical Physics, Psychology, Medicine, Languages and that’s in addition to the two wonderful people who’ve got into two of the best acting training establishments in the country and the one that flies out to spend the entirety of his next year in Hong Kong…I couldn’t be more proud to know these people and feel more privileged to have been a part of their lives… I’m really eager to ge

A blog from Joanna and Alice about the Writers Festival... On Wednesday it was the Writers’ Festival which marked the end of Drury Lane Library which is soon to close. Drury Lane is special to Yew Tree because it’s where they held their first youth theatre sessions. There were several instalments created by the writers. One of which was a timeline explaining a bit about the library’s history and the writers had created poems for the different chapters along the timeline. The thing we talked about afterwards was how much we hadn’t known about a building we’d used so much. The timeline said the library had won The Winston Churchill award for National Library Week in 1967 which surprised us because it’s not seen prestigious anymore which is a shame. As we were writing this we realised that as ever we had had exactly the same thought process (similar to when we went to Ikea and bought all the same things for the drama schools we’re going to at different ends of the country,) but anyway w

Jess gives you an insight into Downton Abbey Day... Well I am going to start by saying I am the worst possible person when I am tired and the weather is rancid... so when i woke up really tired and it was chucking it down I'm not going to lie, I did not want to get out of bed. To be honest I just assumed that 'Downtown Abbey Day' would be cancelled. I am so happy that it wasn't because it was such a good day! I really enjoying the parlour games which is great because I am not thee most enthusiastic games player at Yew Tree ha! Charades and Chinese Whispers were possibly my favourite games of Yew Tree this year   Dressing up and acting on the stairs at Nostell was sooo good, and would not have been the same if the weather had meant us going to Sarah T's. There were some really interesting characters created that I would really like to see more of sometime, and the storylines we came up with combined with the house and grounds made it all seem real! I loved it me...

A volunteered blog from Ellie Moran about the writers festival! I spent teatime/night time at the Dury Lane Library today which is closing and moving to somewhere else, when you say it is only moving, they loose all concept of it being a sad thing, although this isnt true when you have memories.  Its not that its a library, its the stuff that's happened within the building. I'm sad to say goodbye after my years there; my first ever Yew Tree session when I was just a little 'en to writing the longest poems at the writers group over the last few years. There something about that library that holds so much, things have changed, it has changed but everybody's personal relationship with what and who is there is a totally different thing and the most sentimental thing of all. Tonight proved that you dont need a big audience to show your best work, the writing was wonderful, the performers were as usual and the security guard obviously at his best too   Well done writers, an