What's happening at YTYT

It makes my week when someone asks to guest blog without being prompted...At Gold Company Amy made my week... Hello my lovely Yew Tree-ers, Amy Thompson here blogging for Gold company as Christmas spirit has officially hit the saturday mornings. Yes, yes it is September, but impressively, we are up to page 6 on the production due in December already. I strongly believe every great session starts with a game of Funky Seaweed and now I have chance to preach that, as our great session started with it. After Danny Bell's slide into the battlefield and Emma Fretwell's truly 'funky' seaweed dance, I didn't think the playing field would get more competitive but I couldn't of been more wrong. It would seem that a game called King Ball turns innocent members of a youth theatre into absolute Olympian competitors. Code words was a great idea to remember who's on your team, so if you ever get chance to play, I recommend 'panther'... I also found out...

Mel with the last of the farewell blogs... Well, I've been at Yew Tree for the past 7 years... I was asked if I wanted to join Gold Company after being picked as 'student of the day' by Sarah on one of my Aim Higher trips. Since then I have come so far. When I joined I was the most broken child and so shy. Along the way I've had my dramas in life but Yew Tree have always been my 'Get Away Card', a place to go where nobody knows about your home life and you can just switch off, relax and enjoy the company of the Yew Tree Family, and look at me now. I've turned in to a confident, young woman (that sounds weird to say haha). Never could I ever have imagined playing a character like Cyprus when I started Yew Tree or even when I auditioned for her at Connections last year. I've come out of my shell in ridiculous amounts and made so many friends at Yew Tree, and hopefully some of those will last a lifetime. I have so much to thank Yew Tree and ...

I’ve had a week dominated by inspiration this week…it’s been all over the place…but I’ll tell you about some of the highlights. At Black Company we are devising our new play, “All I Want for Christmas,” our attempt at a romcom which is a new challenge for us.   We had a really good session on Thursday – casting was in place and we got straight on with the task of creating content for the play – storylines, moments of joy and sadness, anticipation…all the things that will make it a pleasure to both perform and watch.   One of the things I love about the process of creating a play is how much youth theatre members inspire me but also how much they are inspired.   Before the session I had actors sending me ideas about what direction we could take characters in and after the session I had so many messages – some with small ideas, some with sections of scripts.   It’s so very lovely that people are inspired enough to go away from the session and still be creating a...

James with the penultimate farewell blog So I’m leaving to go to university in 14 days, scary thought that one. Not sure if I can hack the responsibility but we’ll find out. The strange bit will be leaving a structure behind that I’ve been used to for so long, being in a particular place at particular times with particular people. But it will be nice to change everything around and concentrate on an area that I’m really interested in. There have been a lot of big decisions to make in the last few years and they all change the way your life goes in the long run. Two years ago I planned to study physics at Warwick and now I’m heading down to Nottingham to study economics. These are two massively different disciplines that require very different skill sets. But how does this have anything to do with yew tree? Well I think making decisions about university has taught me not to shy away from changing things around, taught me to decide what I enjoy and what interests me and no...

September has finally arrived which means that this time next week the YTYT term will have well and truly started and it promises to be one of the busiest yet... September will be full of initial rehearsals for our Christmas shows...I love how as soon as we are back in the rehearsal rooms in the autumn term everything starts to feel festive straight away.   First week back at Gold we will be cultivating christmas carol splendidness and i can't wait! October we have the Miners Memorial Service and Halloween at Nostell as extra projects running alongside our main rehearsals.   These two events have become key events in our calendar and stretch and challenge the performs that take part in them in very different ways.   November will feature the Connections auditions and the Plays and Pints drama festival and December we will celebrate Christmas with our Festive Fairytales performance as well as an open mic night thrown in for good measure! It's an ambiti...

Harry with his farewell blog Well, this September I'll be coming up to my 9th year at Yew Tree, and this September I will be moving away down to Lincoln for university.. excitingly scary stuff! I remember my first session at Yew Tree, back at Drury Lane Library and little 9 year old me was absolutely terrified! I remember how much fun I had and how I couldn't wait to go back again the week after, I remember raving to my parents about everything that happened in the car on the way back home.. Over the years I had so many great memories as a young kid in Gemma's Saturday morning session (before they were even named colours!) Whether it was performing 'The Xmas Factor' at the church in Eastmoor (the church in which I used to dread putting the chairs out every Saturday after the session finished) or my ridiculous attempt at an American accent in 'Maybe This Time' when I was 11 (in which I had to kiss Emily McGee and was terrified hahaha). So first of all...

Last week I unashamedly gloated about the joys of being on holiday – you’ll remember lots of self -congratulatory ramblings about how much sun and relaxation were going on.   Well, it got to the point where I was so comfortable with that pace of life I started to worry that I might not be able to cope with the pace back here… Turns out it was ok, we got back late Wednesday night…Thursday morning I sprang out of bed full of all the things that needed to be done…and more importantly full of enthusiasm for them… Since then I have barely stopped – I’ve had meeting with organisers of literary festivals and drama festivals, I have written evaluation reports, almost finished a play (with a bit of luck the almost on that won’t be necessary by the end of today) I have organised filming session, recruited actors for projects, submitted Theatre in Education proposals, I have sent 100’s of emails and pretty much cleared the inbox…not quite but I’m getting there, I have read and shortl...