What's happening at YTYT

Each year there are things in our YTYT schedule that are repeated, that have become annual events in our calendar and bring happiness through their familiarity and the opportunity to build on successes and lessons of previous years.  The Christmas shows are one of these annual events and Leah, in her blog this week, illustrates just how important they are to the youth theatre and the individuals within it.  This year they are on the 12th and 13th of December which makes them closer than you think.  I have been so pleased with this weeks rehearsals as I have watched all of the companies I direct start to pull their shows into shape.  No less delightful is the anticipation of seeing the shows I'm not involved in by Crimson and Purple...it's lovely being able to sit back and watch brilliant Youth Theatre work that you have no responsibility for. Another of our annual events is National Connections - an opportunity for older youth theatre members who are really in...

This very lovely blog is by Leah from Sapphire...      Right, so, this is my first official blog for Yew Tree. The other was just coursework that Sarah wanted to use as a Lit Fest Blog. I’m not sure how to tackle this so I have coffee to hand and music to ear.     So, this for year’s Christmas performance, I have a larger part than I have had in previous years. It is most definitely a challenge but it’s so nice to perform differently than I have done before.   The run though for this week was the cast of the night I’m performing and I enjoyed every moment of performing this week.   Every week we have done a run through, the cast have gotten better and better each week. Being a narrator and not part of the chorus means I can see how lovely the cave and market scene looks from a point of view of the audience. It is really well staged and it really does look like what it’s mean to! Even the smaller parts like the cave and the vi...

Saturday morning at Gold Company was a joy.   I approached it with trepidation as progress in Flutter (our version of Cinderella) has been disjointed of late due to half term, Hepworth Zombie Tours and Connections retreats.   Despite all of these distractions relentlessly the performance dates inescapably approach.   By the end of our Saturday morning however we had made such progress that I was no longer scared of the time trickling away as a finished production now feels possible but in fact entirely likely… As a director it’s my job to cajole actors into the best performance they are capable as individuals, as actors working together in a scene and as a cast.   I try to do this in a number of ways…I encourage and coerce, push and prompt, challenge and I hope every now and again inspire.   On Saturday it felt like all that energy was put to very good use… Generally the two thirds of the play we worked on is looking so much better b...

Charlotte Scott is our guest blogger... Okay so I though I would talk about my week at yew tree, cause its been quite busy... On Monday i got to volunteer in my old Primary School in Castleford which was sooooo nice  :) We helped the class put together stories about the sculptures at The Hepworth. So we began the day with captain beaky( I think that's how you spell it?) and killer twelve and then moved onto developing the characters the class created in small groups when we were at the Hepworth a few weeks ago. Some of the groups had some brilliant ideas and the one that seems to stick in my mind is about a trip to the dentist... Ha! Inspired by a sculpture they thought looked like a tooth... Then after dinner it got a bit hectic but it all calmed down after we played another quieter game and then they were all well on there way to finishing their stories! So then we move to Thursday and Friday where I was involved in a Play in a Day with two different schools at the new Wa...

I pride myself on the sense of support and positivity we cultivate at YTYT…its not perfect but it’s pretty good and I’m impressed and gratified by the way you help promote the values of nurture and encouragement that are so important to me and to Yew Tree Youth Theatre. However I’m about to propose something that at first might seem to contradict this…don’t worry...it doesn’t, it just might appear to, but go with me… Often I come home from rehearsals and talk about how good a member of the company I’ve been working with is, how they’ve improved, or made a discovery or tried something new or worked really hard…I realised this week that haven’t been doing that recently…It’s not that anyone is doing badly…you really are impressive its just that no one seems to be really bothered about being brilliant and if you are you’re not working hard enough for me to see it… It just feels like your energy isn’t being employed in the direction that best serves the compan...

Jack has filled us in on the Zombie shenanigans at the Hepworth... As some of you know, last week members of Yew Tree Youth Theatre guided the legions of the undead around the Hepworth art gallery as a promotion for their new exhibition showing Hepworth’s drawings of doctors and surgeries. Everyone had a great time, with some hilarious moments. First, Thomas “First of all I'd just like to say that doing the Zombie Walk at the Hepworth with awesome friends at Yew Tree was brilliant! It was such a fun day full of laughter and decaying zombies, i.e. visitors to the Hepworth aha…I had a blast doing the tours around the gallery and playing Jed, one of the visitor assistants who just didn’t quite get that the Hepworth was actually a research facility for zombies…some of my favourite highlights of the day was seeing all the visitors on the tour really getting into the spirit of the event and just going for it as zombies, and even scaring one or two people ha and all the staff of the Hep...

We did Halloween at Nostell Priory this week, we also did Zombie walks at the Hepworth this week and so we were out and about in public an enormous amount…it was tiring and it was challenging but it was also, as ever, a complete pleasure.   I’ve been reflecting on why spending so much time in the cold and in a state of continual readiness all week is in fact a pleasure and these are some of the reasons I’ve come up with.   Firstly its so lovely to watch actors enjoying each other’s company whether this is in rehearsals or before the show when a certain amount of ridiculousness is sprinkled amongst the serious preparation.   I know how much support you get from each other and how much laughter you generate together and at your best you are the most brilliant friends anyone could ask for!   However that’s not the whole story regarding watching you together…one of the nicest things for me is at the end of performances when you can’t wait to share yo...

Michael has blogged about Halloween... Well, I would just like to start by saying just how much I have enjoyed the past week, I genuinely love waking up and having Yew Tree all day. If I could quit mainstream education and just do Yew Tree all the time, I would. Alas, I need the qualifications and the sandwiches at my school are pretty damn good.  Anyway, brace yourself for a rather long blog by my standards, might want to put the kettle on for this one… As this week has been my first time doing Halloween at Nostel (I should clarify by saying that for the last week I’ve been doing Halloween at Nostel) I had absolutely no idea what to expect. When I arrived at Sarah Thomas a few days before out first official rehearsal, I was informed that I was to be a plant, I don’t mean like a daffodil or something (Good God I’m hilarious), I mean a plant in the audience. Along with my partner in crime Miss Lucy Tranter, aka Tranter we devised our characters. James and Beth were also goin...