What's happening at YTYT

Sam MG writes the first of our farewell blogs this summer... Around two years ago now, myself and my proverbial partners in crime – Bailey Poching and John Broadhead – offhandedly mentioned that we should go and see Yew Tree’s latest production; we knew of it through Tom and knew that they were performing for the National Theatre’s ‘Connections’ program. Now, at the time, my only real acting experience was jovial roles in school musicals (We Will Rock You, Guys and Dolls etc…) and something of a ‘real’ acting challenge was what I wanted. After seeing this very same performance, entitled ‘Hacktivists’, three times, myself, Bailey and John decided that we were getting TOO MUCH sleep on weekends, and agreed to attend Yew Tree’s Gold Company sessions at 10am on a Saturday. 10am on a Saturday was something that I hadn’t seen since Under 7’s football. I could spend this writing about the plays we undertook, the direction we were given, the roles I performed in my tenure under Sarah’s di...

Mia was on work experience with us last week and as per tradition she's  written a blog... This week has been a long but exciting week so I would make yourself a nice brew, or a cold beverage whatever takes your fancy really, before you begin to read my blog about my week on work experience with yew tree! This week I have been doing work experience and because I want to be an actor when I’m older I thought, what a better place to do work experience than with yew tree. So this week I’ve been going from school to school with Sarah. We began the week at De Lacey Primary school in Pontefract. We were working with children who found education challenging so they were a little bit more difficult and needed the extra support in classes. In the first two classes, which were years 3 and 4, we were helping the children create physical theatre pieces to the song ‘Human’ by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man. The routines included creating 4 movements about why the children enjoy being human. Some chil...

Sam has blogged about our visit from Laerlingan! With a title as a Norwegian Jazz/Swing/Folk Band, Laerlingen have always sounded like something not only from Yew Tree folklore, but of actual folklore as well. They’ve been ranted and raved about by Yew Tree members throughout my two year tender, but I never anticipated just how downright fun a night with the band could actually be. My first meeting with the band came through their incomparable Artistic Director, Rolf. Being the latest performer to arrive to the pre-show rehearsal, I was met with his wry humour: ‘We did this perfectly earlier, so if it goes wrong it’s your fault’. I laughed it off and took it in my stride, then proceeded to – almost in a scripted fashion – get the song wrong. His faux-stern look was enough to humble my performance mode, but a quiet word of assurance from the man which, I might add he had no obligation to do, set me straight for the real performance. In a free ten minutes before the show, we decided...

Lovely Toni has blogged about Macbeth... On Sunday afternoon, Black Company performed their full length Shakespeare, Macbeth, in the Calder at the Hepworth. For those unfamiliar with the space, this is the bottom floor of an old mill by the waterfront just next to the Hepworth playground. It’s hard to imagine that Yew Tree could pick a better setting. The stage was set against the back wall with the windows blacked out, other than the ones right behind the stage allowing three beams of light to flood into the room setting a dark and authentic tone. This also created silhouettes of the actors throughout the play, fitting to the eeriness of the witches and adding to the haunting nature of the cold blooded murders in the play. Barring the Romeo and Juliet film with Leonardo DiCaprio, I’d never seen a full length Shakespeare tragedy (despite studying Lady Macbeth for GCSE English). This was mainly because I’d stereotyped them as being harder to follow and a bit duller than comedies but ...

Lucy played Lady Macbeth brilliantly in our recent production and she's blogged about the experience... So as most of you know Black Company have just finished doing Macbeth, and I know I'm biased but honestly we absolutely smashed it! We started back in January with a workshop/audition session where if we wanted to be considered for Lady Macbeth or Macbeth we had to learn one of their speeches. I decided to throw myself in at the deep end and learn the monologue for Lady Macbeth, not thinking by any stretch of the imagination that I'd actually get it, but by some miracle I managed it, and to say I underestimated what a challenge that role would be is a massive understatement. Lady Macbeth goes on such a journey through the play and the difference between the manipulative, hard as nails woman you see at the beginning and the broken and defeated woman she is after her decent into madness is huge. And I'm pretty sure my first few attempts at portraying that were pre...

Ellie has blogged about Bassett For the last few months gold company have been been rehearsing and putting together a show called Bassett, a past connections show. It's a show about some year 11 students who have been locked in a classroom by their citizenship teacher and one particular student, Leo, takes it much more harshly than the rest and ends up spray painting a wall and piling people on top of each other. Rehearsal wise we started off the first few weeks preparing the short 10 minute opening of it for the 21st of may, we made sure it was a strong audience worthy show and it definitely payed off, after the showcase on the 21st we started to focus on later parts of the play, creating the right atmosphere and building the characters. Thinking about action and reaction, feeling the emotion rather than just doing the emotion and it definitely built the show and made it much stronger, this also helped us create the right feel for the ending- where Leo goes nuts. After mont...

As is our yearly tradition, today's blog tells the story of Three our National Connections production from the point of view of the actors - a talented and brilliant group of young people who produced a piece of theatre that genuinely entertained their audience... John As the lights went down on our performance of Three, there were many things passing through my mind: predominantly, frustration at the power cut cancelling our show. As the lights went down on our performance of Three for the second time, what went through my mind instead was the gratification of performance I have been chasing since I first started acting, gratitude to Sarah, and to the kind staff of the Crucible and National Theatre, and a desperate need for a kebab and some sleep. I'm glad to have been able to be a part of it all. Jacob There’s an old saying that’s a bit of a cliché that says “it’s impossible to describe … in just a paragraph.” Now while I’m not usually one for clichés this one d...