What's happening at YTYT

So as I am away from all things Yew Tree at the moment this, and the next couple of blogs, will have to have something of a wider theme... Today's is inspired by my trip to Alcatraz yesterday... As I picked up the audio tour headphones ready to embark on the tour around the cell block a little bit of me was dreading the prospect of a crass, sentimentalisation of an area of American history that doesn't bare any sort of sentimentalisation...it is a serious story with mistakes and casualties...a story that deserves to be told well.. I was however very pleasantly surprised...because as it turned out the story of the building's history was told by people who had lived and worked in the prison.  Consequently it had an authenticity that was engaging rather than the focus being on mindless entertainment and was sensitively told rather than being sentimentalised and sensationalised.  I left informed yet wanting to know more as there were as many questions as answers in the tour inf...

Our new members of Gold are our bloggers   The  whole experience of joining Yew Tree for Sam, John and I has been a fairly simple one. We were in need of something creative to do, an outlet, so that we could have fun whilst making stuff too, but weren't really looking for anything- we'd just spitball ideas for scripts that would never come to fruition. Then Amy (Osborne, of course), one of my closest friends, who'd asked me to join Yew Tree once before in high school, invited me to come see a show she was in, Hacktivists. Sam had been invited separately by Tom (also of the Osborne clan), his Guys 'n' Dolls costar. John saw that we were planning to go in our Facebook group chat and asked if he could come along (there was a fourth would-be Yew Tree member that went, but we speak not of her). So we went to see Hacktivists, thoroughly enjoyed it and on a whim, John pulled me and Sam to one side and said, "we should join Yew Tree". So we tentatively approached ...

Yesterday I spent the day with a group of aspiring actors in Garforth who had decided to invest their precious Sunday in learning something about acting with me as their tutor.   I really enjoy these sessions and since I made a connection with Noda, by teaching at their Summer School, I’ve had the chance to do quite a few.   We spent the day thinking about creativity, voice, physicality, interpretation of script and characterization – obviously it was quite the whistle stop tour.   The participants of the course soaked everything up and were very vocal in how much they had learnt and enjoyed it.   However as they day turned out my lasting impression of the day will be much more about the people I met than what I taught.   There was a lady who makes her living writing stories for women’s magazines…she’s in the Peoples Friend and Take a Break this week – how cool is that?   Another lady after 14 years of being a HLTA had taken the brave mo...

The very excellent Alice Narey ladies and gentlemen... So… as a result of me never doing a blog, my open hate for English and my bad hiding skills… I have been picked to do this week’s blog about my Saturday at Gold. This week was musical week! *jazz hands* and despite the overwhelming majority of us groaning at the idea, I think I speak for most people when I say I was pleasantly surprised. We started the session with our usual bests and worsts and then, because I was extremely cold, we played an energetic game of stuck in the mud. However, because it was musical week *jazz hands* when we had been tug we had to sing a song. I know, it seemed like a good idea at the time until the room was filled with random songs and general chaos… but I can definitely say that I was warmed up at the end! Our next game involved quick thinking and story making to warm up our brains as we were about to create our very own musicals! *jazz hands* …Okay I’ll stop with the jazz hands… We were the...

Abbie-Leigh with her debut blog :) Monday at Sapphire was completely different to what we usually do, as Calum came in to show us how stage fighting works. I haven’t really done much of this before so it was a great experience. We did a weird but humorous warm up then went straight into watching Calum throw Tom around Which was indeed, quite entertaining. We all had a partner and got to try loads of different moves out, things like slapping, punching, hair pulling, neck snapping and even biting (don’t worry, nobody actually got hurt;)) Each one was demonstrated, then we were given time to try it ourselves. I learnt a lot and found it all quite interesting; I would happily have another session on stage fighting. As mentioned earlier I had never really done this before, nor had some of the others there. It was new to us and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Sapphire is always the highlight of them dreadful Mondays for the majority of us, and even though we love our usual sessions, i...

Hannah has sent a blog...it's definitely worth a read... So this week I flew solo at Gold for the first time while Sarah was away at a wedding. As a result things were a little different, I collected money in a phone sock and signed everyone in with a disney princess sparkly gel pen... Last week at the Alice in Wonderland tech, Shelbie told me she'd never played Park Bench and so I decided to do a session on improvisation. We started off with Best and Worst as usual and after a quick game of Coconuts to warm everyone up we jumped straight into improvisation with games like Yes and... and Sun and Moon to get people thinking quickly. Then it was time for Park Bench and a game which I'm going to call improvisation circle/freeze because I can't remember its name but everyone is in a circle and two people improvise in the middle until someone says freeze and takes the place of one of them. During these I was really impressed with Bailey and Sam because it was their se...

Yew Tree Youth Theatre provides a place for young people to play, to find their voice, to walk a little taller with a little more surety and an outlet for creativity.   Also through the exploration of scripts and stories we stand for a little while in other people’s shoes, which helps understand ourselves and the world around us a little better.   It’s occurred to me on many occasions that there are lots of grown ups that could do with a place like that and so the idea of a youth theatre type drama group for people who can no longer qualify as “young people” would be a good idea. On Tuesday at the ballet class I attend with a brilliant set of grown ups I found out due to a class finishing that there was space in the hall we use on a Wednesday evening…without thinking I said , “Perhaps that’s when I could do my adult’s drama class,” and was taken aback by the enthusiasm.   The general sentiment was that this was a good idea… First check in was with Oz just to make...