What do you value enough....?

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There’s all sorts of things going on at YewTree Youth Theatre at the moment so it’s tricky to pick what to focus on...I’m devising with Sapphire and Gold for their Christmas shows, Black Company is very much in the swing of rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast to be performed in June, we are starting to make plans for our 20th Birthday party in September, Gemma and Crimson Company are rehearsing scenes from Connection plays whilst Purple are enjoying delving into the world of James and the Giant Peach and that’s to name but a few of our current projects…

After some deliberation I decided to pick, “Plinth” the piece that we are devising in response to the Lynda Benglis exhibition at The Hepworth, Wakefield as the focus of this week’s blog.   The process of making “Plinth,” began when we went to have a look at the gallery last month.  After a thoughtful and thorough look round the current exhibition we decided that we wanted our piece of performance to ask two questions of the audience:

What do you value enough to put on a plinth?
What should you value enough to put on a plinth?

To understand why we alighted on these questions it might be useful to define what we mean by the word plinth – if the word doesn’t mean anything to you or is ambiguous we are defining it as the rectangular slab or block that forms the lowest part of the base of a column, statue or pedestal and it’s what you put art work on to display it.  This means that if something is stood a plinth it is deemed to be of importance, value, worthy of being raised in stature, essentially better than other things.  Hence the direction of our questions…if we were to look at our lives, what would we pull out as being the most important thing?

When we started the devising yesterday we added a third question, which we felt would be equally important during our creative process:

What do other people value enough to put on a plinth?


The resulting discussions were fascinating and as a result “Plinth,” to be performed on the 27th of June at the Gallery will include issues as varied as belonging, the right to vote, medical research, make up, wealth and education.  I’m going to enjoy the process of crafting a piece that allows us to debate and ask questions about these issue before ultimately making decisions about how we will present them to the audience.  Already the company have had to reflect on what they value in their lives and lifestyle and how that corresponds and differs to others.  It’s going to be a fascinating journey.

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