The Christmas Shows 2013: Inspiration, Preparation, Celebration!

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It was the Christmas Shows for YTYT this week and if you weren’t aware of that you haven’t been paying attention as there has been a great amount of shouting about it!

The shouting has been with good reason as “Festive Fairytales,” was nothing short of wonderful.  Two nights of the very best of youth theatre shared with parents, family and friends.  It’s a brilliant thing to be part of…

However the performances although so significant in one way are only a small part of the whole deal with this part of Yew Tree life and I thought it was worth reflecting on what goes on in order to make the performance nights so memorable…

It starts with INSPIRATION – this comes from many places – sometimes a well known story sparks it, which was the case with this years A Christmas Carol.  Sometimes it can come from a piece of music as was the case with Black Company’s “All I want for Christmas.”  Sometimes an actor or two will inspire that essential original though…knowing I had Sam and Marcus in my cast this year was one of the main reasons for picking the ludicrous “Rumplestiltskin” as Sapphire’s show.   That original spark and choice of material is followed by a devising, writing stage which is sometimes started as far back as May!  This stage is all about creativity and it’s shared by the actors and writers as that produces the best results.

Then we move into PREPARATION…the real graft…rehearsals, line learning, the gathering of props and costumes…hours and hours of work.  The payoff to which is that we see people grow before our very eyes.  They grow in confidence, in skill, in the way they communicate ideas, in their bravery.  It’s a wonderful thing to witness.  This stage culminates in the Tech rehearsal which staff at the theatre now call “Yew Tree Sunday.”   It’s on this day that we start to get a taste of what the results of all our hard work are going to be.

This brings us to the final stage which is CELEBRATION and the one which we share with you…we celebrate through the final performances, the photo’s, these blogs, the messages and posts and words of congratulations share between actors and audience members.  It’s magical and something I feel privileged to be a part of…I can’t tell you how lovely it is to see how impressed parents are by their children and how much the youth theatre enjoy watching each others performances.

My final thought is one of gratitude…it’s been a wonderful YTYT year this year, culminating in what one audience called “The best ever,”  Christmas shows…thank you so much to everyone who has been any part of any stage of it…we couldn’t do it without you!

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