What's happening at YTYT

This week in amongst the usual array of YTYT loveliness we were at a Peace and Unity conference in a 6 th form in Brighouse.   The piece of theatre in education we took was called The Difficult Choice and its purpose was to provoke discussion and thinking about being a good neighbour and a true friend.   This is the third time we have performed this piece at this event but it has particular relevance to me and mine at the moment… The workshop I facilitated after the performance included debates and discussion on the importance of striving to be non –judgemental despite how challenging this is.   We spoke about how vital it is to be curious about why people do and say things instead of just reacting to them.   We championed the qualities of generosity, bravery, thoughtfulness and positivity. At a time in my life where the challenges seem greater than normal it was reassuring to see that the 200 young people we worked with were aware of their responsibility t...

Dec is our reluctant but more than capable guest blogger this week So basically it's my turn to blog this week and well let’s just say normally when Sarah asks someone to be guest blogger I normally hide away in fear but I guess there no escaping this one. This week has been like no other, busy but it’s also been different and way out of my comfort zone. A couple of weeks ago Sarah asked me if I would be part of a play which would be performed to year 12s at Brighouse 6 form. The performance was called “The Difficult Choice?" which is a modem day version of the story, the parable of the Good Samaritan. So Wednesday morning was interesting we ended up with a broken car window before we even left Sarah T’s. The performance was about a group of girls who went to a party and one of the girls had to leave the party which ended up in her getting into to trouble with some lads. The performances all went well but the thing which I was mostly worried about was the workshop afterw...

Bobbie is our first guest blogger Yesterday I went to see the first performance for Performers UK which was, as I'm sure that you already know, Peter Pan, and it all but exceeded the expectations that I had for this show. Obviously I've been around Yew Tree for, forever, meaning, by default, I've been around WYTDC for a while too and these people have worked so hard, to make this, probably, the best show I've seen from them, to date.  Personally, I've seen little glimpses of Peter Pan through their rehearsals, from them just starting their dances, to hearing the songs before Eclipse rehearsals, to helping with the music through the second half, and none of that took anything away from the performance yesterday, which is surely a testament to how good these people were? The kids held their own against the older ones, and the older ones put in some of their best performances and it was SUCH a treasure in order to sit there and be able to watch, be able to take all...

My week this week has been all about Peter Pan – a performance at The Phoenix Theatre .   Not strictly a Yew Tree Youth Theatre production as it was the work of a new company - WY Performers but as I was the writer and director pretty closely linked.   The cast of 43 children and young people have worked so hard and the results are brilliant to see…so many of them have emerged as engaging and glorious performers, surpassing even my high hopes.   When you think that a significant proportion of them aren’t even at high school yet, their talent and dedication is wonderful to behold.   As audience members drive home after the show I am sure they talk about the way a particular character danced beautifully in a particular number and the great acting of another character in a particular scene and they will be right to praise them, because praise they well and truly deserve.   However I want to spend a moment paying tribute to the unsung heroes.   So he...

This week we were forced to say goodbye to a number of heroes…one of them particularly struck pretty close to home. I am so not a celebrity fan girl – I judge a person by their treatment of others, their work and their contribution to their field and so am always entirely behind in any case of scandal or any personal details of an actor’s or musician’s life…because of that my heartfelt sadness in reaction to the death of Alan Rickman took me entirely by surprise… This surprise in turn prompted a reflection on why the news impacted on me so much, which in turn resulted in the following conclusions… The first thing and the most obvious was that as an actor, an artist and a role model he inspired me – he used the gifts that he had of being able to portray character, express emotions and tell stories impeccably…he was a joy to watch from his touching honesty in Truly, Madly Deeply to his popular culture offerings in Harry Potter…I fell in love with character after character be...

And Emily is our second... I t’s rehearsals, rehearsals and more rehearsals at the minute (and I couldn't be happier about that)! Monday nights at Sapphire are a wonderful way to start. We explored into improvisation which included many of us coming out of comfort zones and being brave (and maybe a yoga position or two). I find improvisation fairly hard as I personally am used to using scripts and feel a lot more comfortable being told what to do rather than coming up with something on the spot and having no one tell me if it is right or wrong so I really enjoy the challenge. On Saturday we rehearse Eclipse which I’m sure you’ve heard is our 2016 Connections play. This year is a lot different to Hacktivists in many ways; the main one being that it is double cast so balancing enough time to both practise and look at what the Darkness in the Light cast are doing is more than enough to keep us busy for two hours. This week we managed to make outstanding progress in the sense that ...

Ellen is our first guest blogger... As you can probably tell it is my turn to blog this week, okay. So I have recently started Black Company, which at first I was kind of nervous about but it turned out to be as fun and as lovely as any other company. We've actually started to do a play, which really excited about. It's all about mafia and singers in the 1920s and honestly I don't think I could be more excited to do a play.  As well as starting Black. I'm part of Connections this year, I'm taking part in a partnership piece which is all about the sun and the moon and the mythology behind it all. This has been such and interesting process as us, the cast, have written it ourselves, and will continue to produce it ourselves mixed with just the right amount of assistance from the lovely Sarah. I am really looking forward to the rest of the creative process with the Connections crew and burnt orange hoodies.  Finally...at Gold this week our workshop on susp...

We were back into it with a vengeance this week as all the groups reconvened for the spring term.   I love this point in the year when everything is new – we’ve already cast the Black Company play “Maybe This Time” get the 17 th of April in your diary so you can see that one – if the auditions are anything to go from it’s going to be excellent…Sapphire Company have chosen a whole host of workshop topics to dive in over the term starting with improvisation next week.   We also hatched plans in Gold Company to make a film – our new home at The Hepworth is the perfect location for such creative endeavours…for the younger groups it was all about enjoying the chance to play after working so hard last term to make sure the Christmas shows were spot on. However in addition to kicking things off we also managed to fit in our first performance of the year.   Friday was an excellent evening as Black Company performed Little Red Riding Hood at the takeover even...

This week at Yew Tree by Eve: To be truthful, this is the first blog I have ever written, so Sarah asking me to do so is a little bit scary but definitely a privilege. On Monday evenings I take part in the brilliant Sapphire Company, and have done for just over two and a half years now. It was the only thing I was able to take part in Yew tree, except his year I chose to take part in Connections to see what the experience would be like and to hopefully push myself further in the subject I love the most. I can say that I will definitely be taking part in next years, if they will have me. I thoroughly enjoy coming on Saturday evenings to take part in the wonderful Eclipse and to see the inventive Darkness in the Light piece. At this week’s session at Sapphire, there was a range of games, followed by a discussion on what we all wanted to focus on for the next few weeks, now that we have finished the Christmas shows. A lot of new ideas were suggested; such as crime, horror, comed...

John is our first guest blogger Yew Tree Youth Theatre’s Black Company was invited to perform their physical theatre interpretation of the classic children’s tale Little Red Riding Hood at a Takeover Evening at Leeds Art Gallery on Friday night. While performing under the visage of works of art far beyond the likes of which I’ve ever seen in person before was a tremendous privilege, and while adapting to the space we had represented its own set of challenges, such self-congratulatory musings won’t be the subject of this blog, for the simple reason that to me, that was not the highlight of the evening. What struck me most about the event was the Women’s Association’s poetry performances, and the subject they dealt with. What being British meant to those with different cultural identities, or, phrased more broadly, identity itself. The performances were quite rousing. Individuals younger than those of the youth theatre picked up a microphone and performed their writing, braving th...

New Years resolutions get a bit of a bad press at the moment – there’s a general consensus that starting the year with an impossible mission is the fastest way to feel like a failure… I absolutely get that but I also think that some times the sense that a new chapter has begun is motivation to redress bad habits or strive to be better or discover something new.   It’s also important to choose something that is acheiveable… To that end I have asked the Connections company to make an acting new years resolution…something that I as their director could help them achieve over the course of connections or depending on the resolution…they have the freedom to choose anything – it can be an improvement of an element of their vocal work, their physicality, their freedom as a performer, their discipline, their readiness to rehearse, their approach to text, their confidence in a particular element of acting, their ability to work an ensemble.   A valued colleague of mine thi...

Yasmin is our second guest blogger... So Sarah asked me to write a blog about my first term at RADA and sitting on the train back to London ready to start term two tomorrow feels like pretty good timing to reflect! Its a funny one because I spent so long trying to get a place and imagining what it would be like when I did and constantly saying ‘yes I know its going to be hard work but I’m ready’ but it turns out there’s a big difference between being aware something is going to be difficult and actually experiencing it. I really have loved my time so far and even on days when I’ve really struggled, I still absolutely wanted to be there struggling. For me, two of the most difficult things about my first term have been letting go of any expectations I had about drama school and just going with whatever is asked of us without questioning it and secondly, dealing with how personal the course is. You have to focus so much on yourself which is a surprisingly hard thing to do. I le...

Our first blogger is Hollie... Today was my first Yew Tree session back after Christmas it was a long day of Connections. We discovered things about our characters and then went on to developing another section of the script whilst also making a song and a short piece of physical theatre. Today was challenging to say the least but we all battled through it to make some incredible discoveries and pieces of art. We started by recapping the scenes that we had already blocked delving further into the lines and thinking about the relationships and the intentions behind every line. After we had recapped our previous work we started to do some work on our character thinking about full names and family and friends. I found that my character, Lucy Lime, is very lonely in the outside world and interacted mainly with adults. This made my approach to the others in the group a lot different because of how I act around them and my maturity in my character compared to the others that still like ...