What's happening at YTYT

Yesterday was a full on day, that followed a full on week...three rehearsals - Gold Company rehearsing The Worn Out Shoes followed by Alice in Wonderland at the West Yorkshire Theatre Dance Centre followed by a Halloween rehearsal - there were, as ever, lots of delights to be found in each one, not least the lovely addition of Calum to all of them (an actor visiting YTYT at the moment) but despite the full on schedule rehearsals were not what I finished the day thinking about. En route from the morning rehearsal to the afternoon appointment Calum and I saw a lady fall and being one of the first on the scene we did what we could to help.  It wasn't much...the poor lady was very confused - although thankfully not badly hurt physically...we eloped her up when she was ready to move, made her comfortable, waited with her and chatted with her until first the rapid response car came to check her over and then the ambulance came. The incident highlighted two things to me - one about hu...

And Cheryl blogs about... Crocodilus Niloticus and the Ration Book. Boo! This last half term has seen the start of a foray back into the classroom for me delivering the music curriculum to some classes in a primary school on behalf of Yew Tree Arts. As I have been determined to remain the composer and not revert to being the teacher, my tactic has been to follow the request of the teachers to link what I do to their topics, but to create new music for the classes and also encourage the classes themselves to compose some music. My admiration for teachers has risen from its already high starting point, but the term thus far has reinforced my determination not be a “proper” teacher again. Nonetheless my previously gathered skills as a proper teacher have been useful, particularly in the matters of crowd control, assessment and thinking on the spot. Oh and for those who have known me in previous teaching incarnations, you’ll be pleased to hear that I have revived the weekly Awards for...

Georgia blogs about Halloween Two rehearsals in for Halloween at Nostell Priory and both plays already look great. The best thing about Halloween this year is that we are putting in two completely different performances. What a Witch for a younger audience is taking shape really fast and as an actor in it I can already tell that not only will the younger viewers enjoy it but also the older members of YTYT enjoy it too... Maybe a little too much... Probably just enjoy watching Beth..I mean Wilma getting wound up! Ghosts in the Garden is completely different to WAW and is quite scary, and to say it's already scary in Sarah T's and I can't wait to see what it looks like at Nostell in the dark! Halloween plays are really interesting to do because it is really different from what we do normally in Gold. All I can say is I can't wait till we get down to Nostel and start staging everything properly!

Beth blogs about Sapphire I thought that rehearsals for Sapphire's Christmas play Dick Whittington went really well, the Rat Rap is developing very well. It is crazy to see everyone dancing like crazy people in it. The music that the cat enters to is ridiculously catchy. I really enjoyed some of the games we played on Monday my favourite game was situation wink murder

Yesterday was an important landmark for Yew Tree Youth Theatre’s Connections production.   For those of you who do not know anything about it…this year we will be working with a play called Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent.   It’s a play about power, responsibility and the role of the internet in our lives.   Set in a hacker space in a school it follows the decisions and dilemmas of a group of young people as they try and work out what the right thing to do is in the face of unjust actions on the part of others.   It asks lots of questions about making choices, alliances and retribution.   The text of the play is break neck in pace and will require a great deal of hard work and skill on the part of the cast to perform it to it’s best potential.   Yesterday it was my responsibility to cast the play, making key decisions as to who would play what character in order to create the right combination for the production.   It’s such a mixed feeling when I have...

Tom O is our guest blogger this week So it’s been a busy Yew Tree week for me, full of new starts and progress made in several different projects. I started the week at my regular session, sapphire company, where we are working hard to prepare a version of Dick Whittington and his Cat for the Christmas performances. Sapphire are well known for our comedic performances, and I am positive this year will not disappoint. Even though we are only a few weeks into rehearsal, you can already see excellent performances emerging as people come to grips with both the play overall, and the role they play within it. Sam Winder deserves a special mention for already being off script, and there are several others who aren’t far behind. We now move on to Wednesday where I found myself at the first meeting of the Halloween at Nostell 2014 cast. Halloween performances will always hold a special place in my heart as it was there I met a lot of the people who would become some of my best friends at...

I’ve had an excellent weekend – one of the highlights of the year is that every autumn I go to The National Theatre to start the preparations for our Connections play.   During this weekend I get to meet the playwright of the play we’ve chosen, have workshops with inspirational practitioners, talk with like minded people and see theatre.   It’s Sarah Osborne heaven… I’m leaving London as I type with a head full of thoughts including ideas about Hacktivists (the play we will be performing in February) and a host of possibilities about my discipline and craft as a director an practitioner however one throw away comment has stayed with me more than any other thing… At the start of the movement workshop I took part in on Friday the facilitator said, “I want to make sure you can do something by the end of the workshop that you didn’t know before, or can do something you couldn’t do or you discover something you had no idea about before you started the workshop.”   It ...

Shelbie is our guest blogger this week Miners has been an amazing experience yet again full of tears and emotions. Seeing all the people at the service was a delight they were all so kind and welcoming. This year was a little different to normal as we didn't have Sarah there to back us up but don't worry we had Oz there even if he didn't like the idea of all us staring and looking at him but he was there on point giving us advice and complementing us for our work. The only problem we had with rehearsing was our volume but we soon picked that up and made it such a great performance. The fact that we only had three rehearsals meant that we were on a time limit to make it the best performance it could be but we pulled through, of course we would I mean we do have Sarah as our director. As I said before its been an amazing experience and I can't wait to do it again next year!

There’s been a multi disciplinary feel to my rehearsals this week – in amongst the general realization of script, character development and staging of scenes a lot of the plays I am directing at the moment have elements when voices and movement are used in a less than naturalistic way.   This week in some sort of a magical creative coincidence we seemed to get to the bits in lots of the play where this was needed – the result was a week full of lots of brilliant entertainment. Monday saw me creating a rat rap with Sapphire Company – that was a joy…who knew for example how adept Sam, Marianne and Isla were at rapping!   Add that to the exceptional energy generated whenever Sapphire join forces to achieve something and the result was an auditory treat that everyone who’ll be at the Christmas shows can look forward to.   It’s a little rough around the edges at the moment but by December it’ll be ridiculously remarkable. On Wednesday I worked with a group of YTYTers ...

I'm delighted to announce Rhiannon as this weeks guest blogger... So recently I’ve tried to involve myself in a number of different projects on top of my usual Yew Tree sessions... This term at Yew Tree is possibly one of my favourite terms because for me, this term brings a number of my favourite performances such as Miners, Halloween and of course, Christmas shows. I have also recently been involved in the Castle of Dreams project performed at Sandal Castle. Castle of Dreams was an exciting but also daunting project for me to sign up for. After being involved in a few little bits of writing for the script and knowing this project was very different to past projects I’ve been involved in – when the call for extra actors and actresses came about, I was more than happy to put myself forward. Walking into a room full of complete strangers on the first day knowing they had all been together for 2 hours already getting to know each other was probably the most nerve racking thi...