What's happening at YTYT

Putting thoughts into words is tricky tonight as my head is overloaded…I’ve just finished an afternoon of dress rehearsals with WY Performers in preparation for their production of Aladdin which happens in less than a fortnight…it’s looking so good…as ever it’s a delightful process to watch something I wrote so many months ago taking shape into a production that will entertain, engage and impress the many people that will come to see it on the 12 th and 13 th of November. It occurred to me as I watched today’s rehearsal that certain things set individual performers (of any age) apart in a production like this…the first is their desire to want to do well rather than an assumption that it will just happen…this however needs to be accompanied by graft as an actor and a dancer that is needed for them to know their lines and steps, understand what they mean and deliver them in a way that is true to the story and the character…this in turn has to be matched with a focus…an ability to ...

Emily is our guest Blogger this week! Well this week we've been very busy at Black company with staging The Snow Princess and I can now happily say we are 3/4 of the way through it and it promises to be a stunning piece! Due to doing the Miners Memorial commitments throughout July, September and October, we started the term on a slight disadvantage against other companies in sense of how much time we'd have to prepare our Christmas show piece. Challenge accepted? Definitely. Black company had an extra rehearsal 12pm until 3pm on Monday to consolidate what we had done in the previous Thursday's rehearsal, catch up anyone who was missing then finally stage the second page of script. Everyone caught up with ease and determination so we could move on to our festival celebration dancing. Yes, you heard me correctly, dancing. With not all of us having taken dance classes before, we spent a lot of time devising our pieces by taking ordinary everyday movements of young people/ch...

It's a beautiful autumnal morning full of golden light on turning trees, continuous cups of tea and a day with space in it stretching out in front of me...the temptation to spend this blog waxing lyrical cliches in homage to seasonal Sunday loveliness is ever so tempting but I have a more practical purpose... I'm going to try and help with the whole line learning business - it's that time in the Autumn term when the Christmas plays need you to confidently and clearly have your lines committed to memory.   It's tricky but it's eminently achievable and the sooner it's done the better the play will be...so here goes...5 top things to remember about learning lines... 1.   Learning lines takes time - you need to set a part lots of short pockets of it - not huge swathes of it - regular 15 minutes of ring feed time - a number of daily fixes - also be strategic - don't try and do the whole play at once - break it down into scenes - sections of scenes - get ...

I just love YEW TREE by Alice Kearford My experience with Black and Orange company, In Black Company were doing a show called The Snow Princess I am a snow flurry a village child and just for a bit the little snow princess. I love doing this show because it’s got snow in it and I love snow and I get to do it with my friends. When I was asked to help with Black Company I felt happy because I’ve never been asked to work with big people before. I find it good to work with big people so that I can learn things from them. Like if you have a line that’s saying that something is going on in the forest. They can show me how to do it .The big people make me feel welcome. By saying things like come here we’ll help you or they will show us what to do. In Orange Company we are doing a play called Santa Got Stuck up the Chimney, I am a star. It is a good show it is funny! My part is a star, we get to dance, I have lots of lines and a sparkly costume! We get the show at the Phoenix theatre,...

It’s such a creative time at YTYT at the moment – we’ve just performed the Miner’s Memorial Service…read Sam’s excellent blog to put you in the picture about that.   Fulfilling this honour means everyone is now full speed ahead for the Christmas shows and I have to say it’s a delight to watch the ones I am directing take shape.   I thought it would be good to share some highlights so think of the following as a sort of written word trailer… “Hansel and Gretel,” is free falling into glory with an ever more ridiculous soundtrack. It now includes MC Hammer, Evernescence and a Conga! I have every faith it’s going to be everything you’d expect from a Sapphire show…brave, bold and brilliant…and although it’s great to see the more established members leading the way it’s also a joy to watch new members, of which there are a fair number, meet the challenge of a Sapphire Christmas show with style. “A Fairytale Like No Other,” really started to come into it’s own this week, th...

The one and only Sam MG... As a man who identifies as a Socialist, I’ve always been very sympathetic to miners and their plights over the last 30/40 years. Whilst I could, and almost always do, spew anti-Thatcher rhetoric for hours on end, I’ve decided that the sanctity of this blog would instead profit from what Black Company actually did at the Miners Memorial Service on October 8 th , and nothing to do with how privatizing and ultimately ending Britain’s main and highly profitable export industries means that growth won’t ever go above 2.5% in my lifetime! Since (I believe) April, Black Company have been devising, writing, rehearsing and performing ‘Remember the Oaks’, an original piece dedicated to those who were involved in the tragedy at the Oaks Colliery in Barnsley, the worst mining disaster to have ever taken place on English soil, and the second worst on British land after the horrors of the Senghenydd Colliery Disaster in Wales. The piece focused on the families of ...

This weekend was the National Theatre Connections weekend which for me meant an intensive full day workshop in the company of many directors and the playwright of Three, our NTC play for this year.  It's always an important weekend for me - a chance to take stock of where I am as a director and practitioner and to be reminded of things that might have been forced to the back of my mind in the sometimes relentless pace of the Yew Tree/Osborne year. In the spirit of the title of this year's play - and one of the exercises we did in the workshop - I'm going to focus on three of the most useful things I came away with from yesterday's activities, discussion and reflection: One - sometimes we need to feel vulnerable and exposed to be liberated from the things that tie us down (or into knots) we need to jump off the metaphorical cliff to know that we can fly - even soar. My job is to create an environment in the rehearsal room where actors feel safe enough to make that leap a...

Ellie is our guest blogger this week!  So my week starts off at Orange, where we're putting together the Christmas show of "When Santa got stuck up the chimney". And all is going well, firstly we played a bit of funky seaweed lead by Sam and Jacob, and then I ran a game of Captain Beaky, and I don't feel like I did too bad! We got straight into a run after our games and were about 2/3 of the way through, which is brilliant! I'm extremely proud of how each member is working! The shows going to look fab! So get booking tickets! Then I have Black Company, I don't think I've Seen a company be so happy to get cookies! So here, we are creating a new version of the Miners Memorial for the service today, if you're free get yourself to Wakefield cathedral at 2:30, it'll be a treat!  Next, I have Gold company, which wasn't on this week due to Sarah being down in London to find out more about this years Connections performance! Then WY Performers and Alad...

I thought a lot about joy yesterday and the importance of remembering to be joyful in the moment. This came about as a result of two excellent rehearsals, which in addition to be productive were also filled with laughter.   Firstly Gold Company’s rehearsal of, “A Fairytale Like No Other.”   We’re making great progress and have already sorted about a boat, the cliffs of insanity and a great deal of the staging.   It’s a brave play stylistically and makes serious demands of the actors who have to snap in and out of character and story frequently.   It’s a real balance of self indulgence and discipline.   Watching the talented actor develop this style is joyous in itself.   Aladdin was equally delightful with one of the few remaining numbers to be choreographed ticked off and a couple of neglected numbers polished up.   I can really feel the pace hotting up and I’m so excited for the final weeks rehearsals where we can start to enjoy what we’ve w...

I love it when we get a first time blogger...today's is Siana who joined Sapphire just before the summer holidays... This week at Yew Tree, Sapphire Company we're acting out Hansel and Gretel in the teams of Team Ginger and Team Bread (Some of the parts are double cast - that's why we have team names.) It's going very well and tickets have just gone on sale, you can get them here . It's not what you would think, expect the unexpected. I play Gore in Team Ginger and I like playing the character because it's a narrating character and you can easily express whether you are on Team Cheer or Team Hate.. I've learned so much from Sapphire Company, I'm not shy at all anymore and I've made so many lovely friends. Hansel and Gretel has taught me not to take family for granted because you never know what will happen in the moment. I love Sapphire Company and in the session this week we also played a game called 'The Bean Game' which is where our l...