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Tom is our guest blogger this week...

So Thursday was an action packed Yew Tree day. At 10 o’clock, in the cold back room of West Yorkshire Theatre Dance Centre, armed with coats and flasks, 4 young people (myself included) began a voyage of discovery into the work of the renowned Stanislavski. And what a voyage it was. From Given Circumstances to Magic If, from Emotional Memory to in depth character development, we absorbed all the information we could possibly take in over the 6 hours available to us.

Now, Stanislavski has his flaws. His method isn’t perfect, and cannot be applied to every single acting scenario. However, with the monologues each of us had chosen, the study of his work allowed us to gain an insight into various directions we could take, and gifted us with tools and techniques to make it possible. Every person had chosen a character very different to their own personality, and it was through the knowledge we now possessed that we accessed these characters and told their story. People showed vulnerability, strength, insanity and fear, and it was testament to how hard they worked that these were put across so well.

For me personally, looking at a monologue in that much depth was a major step on my acting journey, and reminded me that no matter how well you’re doing in, the question you should always be asking yourself is “what’s next?” So that is going to be my mantra from now on. Appreciate what you’re doing, enjoy it, but be prepared to ask what’s next.


Of course, I could not be satisfied with only doing one thing in the day, so after the first session finished at 6, Mr Declan Kelly and I began practising lines and American accents, in anticipation for our next rehearsal. This was for Maybe This Time, a play full of gangsters, guns, romance, and betrayal, set in 1920s Chicago. This is being performed at Ossett town hall on the 17th of April, and if you’re free, you should definitely come, it’s going to be a good one.

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