What's happening at YTYT

We say involvement in the arts increases confidence so often there’s a danger we take it for granted…but when you consciously witness it happening in front of your eyes it gives you sharp kick of a reminder. This week I was the drama practitioner on a YTYT/WYTDC Summer School where we started off with 23 children between the ages of 4 – 13 years old, a scene structure and a CD of music and ended up with a performance of Sleeping Beauty where everyone had lines and almost everybody danced… The process was not smooth – with that recipe it was never going to be but what I became aware of was just how quickly the children absorbed skills, learnt about expectations and grew into the roles they had been allocated.   I saw children who had never danced before start off by being floored by simple choreography but mastering it in a couple of days so instead of watching their feet in fear they just enjoyed the dance.   I saw a shy thoughtful child find the confidence to play th...

The last of the farewell blogs is by Amy...can't  believe  she's got away with writing so few in her loooonnnnggg YTYT life... As it turns out, I have been at Yew Tree Youth Theatre for an extremely long time. I have had a good long think and I’m not sure I can actually give you a definite amount of years, but I can promise you there have in fact been a lot of them. I am almost certain I can remember every single Connection’s play since we started (not that I know how many of them there have been, I think I'm going to settle for 13) and I have actually participated in 5 of them. I have been a happy little member of Ruby Company, Sapphire Company, Scarlett Company and Black Company. I've performed in numerous Christmas shows, Miners Memorial Performances, and Summer School plays. I've done various shows at Ossett Town Hall and the Hepworth and many little wonderful and obscure places around Wakefield and the surrounding area. I've loved doing shows that coll...

There were two YTYT events this week – the first Black Company rehearsals for our imminent performance of Remember the Oaks.   It’s a strange rehearsal process this one – due to summer and holidays I am having to weave the pieces of the performance back together a little like a patchwork quilt.   We have new members in the cast and people from the original production that can’t be in it…so there is a certain amount of adaptation involved.   I’m also being able to use the benefit of hindsight and iron out some of the creases of the original staging.   However because of the people involved and the way the play is constructed I have no doubt that the production will be just as magic as it’s premier performance.   A noteworthy delight of the rehearsal was having Ellen back after completing her post-graduate diploma – she’s with us on loan while she waits for her agent to get her some excellent auditions.   I say wait – I have no doubt she will be working hard...

Hello there and welcome to this blog – for anyone who doesn’t know me I am Brittany Dore, Yew Tree graduate who cannot seem to shake Yew Tree from her system (an undercurrent theme of this blog).   I was asked to write this blog after my most recent return to the Games Day session which, as you can probably guess, was the most fun I’d had for quite a few weeks – which isn’t surprising considering I’d spent the weeks prior in the archives for historical research but moving on… We began the day with the usual best and worst before jumping into the actual games.   Now if I had a better memory I would tell you what order we played the games and who won each and the like but unfortunately I don’t so here’s a few quick highlights of my favourite moments.   So let’s begin with the fact that the session has a decidedly ‘Olympics’ feel to it – with things such as a ‘make me’ and the two touch scenes being based around the Olympics or other sporting events.   My team made a...

Lottie's farewell blog... Attending Yew Tree sessions has been an integral part of my life for quite some time now - minus my brief hiatus last year (but we’ll just pretend that didn’t happen) - so I can confidently say it’s going to be pretty weird without it. For some reason, it always seemed like university and leaving home was in the distant future, one of things that you know is going to happen at some point, but doesn’t seem like it’ll ever actually get here. And now it’s here. And quite honestly, I have no idea how that happened. The past 4 years or so at Yew Tree have been an absolute blur, filled with ridiculous sessions at Sapphire and slightly more serious ones at Black. I have so much to thank YT for, enough to probably write a book, but I’m going to keep this relatively short and sweet. I think more than anything, I’m grateful that Yew Tree provided me with a place to go to completely escape academic chores; it constantly allowed me to be creative without the co...

Theoretically it should all be quiet at the moment…normal Yew Tree is having a well earned rest but due to one thing and another it turns out that in actual fact the YTYT buzz is still well and truly in evidence. Our Plays in a Day are proving very popular and this week was no exception. In my absence due to summer schools over the last couple of weeks Alice has been running them brilliantly.   This week, however, I was able to join over twenty children in a tale of princesses, knights and monsters and it was a joy.   I have a bee in my bonnet at the moment about how important it is for theatre practitioners and playmakers to think about the stories they want to tell and why they want to tell them..   This story was created in partnership with the 6 – 11 year olds taking part and the result made me very happy indeed.   Our story told the tale of someone making a mistake – taking responsibility for their actions and the community joining together to fix things. ...

Foreword: This will be possibly the cringiest, soppiest and probably longest blog in the existence of blogs, so if you aren’t into that sort of thing then i’m very sorry. Something i’m sure no one knows about my Yew Tree journey is that it almost didn’t happen, if it wasn’t for the relentless pestering from Katie Ludvigson I most likely wouldn’t have been a yt’er, so thank you Katie. The first play I did was The History of Theatre performed at the Wakefield Theatre Royal with a cast that is now scattered all over the country doing amazing things and some still in Wakefield preparing to leave or continuing on with their YT journey. Devising the play was possibly one of the weirdest and simultaneously funniest experiences in my life as for my first ever YT session I stood in a box with Jack, Emma and Lucy (a very small box i might add) pretending we were travelling through the.....History of ...

Yesterday I got back from NODA Summer School after a week of pure creative joy.   It’s a Summer School that is all about people immersing themselves in something they can’t always focus on in their day to day lives…it’s about people learning something new about the thing they love and often learning something new about themselves…it’s also about being brave and honest and open and generous. All of that means that often it’s a transformative experience that brings out the very best in the students and the tutors.   This is all thanks to the truly brilliant team that spend endless hours making it happen in the first place. This year I had the privilege of being the tutor on the Directing Drama course which meant I got to spend the week with 20 students from places as diverse as France, The Shetland Islands,  Somerset and everywhere in between.   The age of the class ranged over 4 decades and the student's experience of directing from one end of the spectrum to the...

Bailey with the first of our farewell blogs of this year before he moves to Liverpool to study at University It’s interesting being part of the ever-growing, and increasingly exciting tapestry of YTYT alumni. Departing after a brief but brilliant sixteen month stint, means I’ve had a fair range of experiences and memories with both Gold Company, and even my handful of sessions at Black, and that I now get to watch on as a follower and supporter of the youth theatre. Man oh man. Where to start. The first few sessions at Gold were fun. I started with two fellow newcomers, for the sake of discretion let’s call them ‘Don’ and ’Pam’. We decided to join Yew Tree as a means of keeping up with each other, having been split by the cruel mistress of sixth form education. Games were played, fun was had, and bonds were formed, and as 2015 slipped through our grasp, Don and Pam and I became divided across Gold and Black Company. By the time the new year dawned I remained a loyal member of Go...