Getting there...

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It’s been another busy, busy week at YTYT – some of us had the pleasure of going to see the simply excellent Splendid Productions perform at The Lowry on Tuesday.  Their production of The Odyssey was raucous, chaotic and entirely engaging  - a completely original take on a very old tale of epic adventure, war and ego.  Yet again Kerry Frampton’s ability to stop that chaos with the most beautiful, poignant character narrative is stunning.  The whole thing was a master class in the possibility of performance.

One of things that takes up quite a bit of time at the moment is directing two pretty large scale performances for the New Year so Friday and Saturday involved full on rehearsals for them…Peter Pan is in January and tickets are on sale here – it includes a number of lovely YTYT members and promises to be a fantastical treat.  The other production “Once Upon a Fairy Tale, “ in partnership with WYTDC, is epic with a cast of 100’s.  I thoroughly enjoyed starting to create a piece of physical theatre where Princess’s are in training to go into battle this week.  The tickets for this one are flying out and so the pleasant pressure is on to create something excellent.

We have now also begun putting our Connections performance, “Eclipse” on it’s feet.  This year we have a chorus within the play and it’s the first time in a very long time I have directed with this convention.  Last night was a brilliantly creative opportunity for me to play with the possibilities of this with a cast who are entirely open to crafting and creating with me.  That added to Simon Armitage’s wonderful script made it the perfect end to a week which just didn’t stop at any point…exhausting and excellent all at the same time.


In other news the imminent YTYT Christmas shows are nicely coming together…we solved some staging issues in “Little Red Riding Hood” that mean the whole piece is smoother and looking the way I envisioned it.  This was helped immeasurably by a volunteer to do sound for me so thank you so much for that Lucy.  “The Snow Queen,” really leapt up a notch and the shape we wanted is all there now.  A couple of weeks to bring everything up to standard and that will be all good too.  Actors there are some great tips as to how to do this in last weeks blog in case you didn’t get chance to read it.  Orange Company’s “One Foggy Christmas Eve,” is taking shape and  Sapphire’s “The Frog Prince,” are gradually getting there but it has a big cast…and is a complex piece – I’m not worried though because they are excellent and always get chance for a sneaky extra rehearsal.  Don’t forget to get your tickets as soon as possible here for what promises to be an absolute pleasure of a festive treat.

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