What's happening at YTYT

Solving creative puzzle,s a thing that dominates a large proportion of my life, is an interesting business.   Sometimes it’s so very easy and instant solutions are found, a good example of this happened recently when the head of one of our partner organizations was looking for the music to the opening number of our shared show at the end of June.   The conversation went something like this… Sarah Thomas (Principal of West Yorkshire Theatre Dance Centre) “What music should I use for the opening number?” Jack Iredale (Member of Black Company who happened to be there) “Eye of the Tiger” Sarah Thomas “Brilliant.” And so a decision was made and apart from Jack being a little shocked he’d got away with such self indulgence everyone moved on to the next creative solution to be found. Some solutions are slightly harder to find but still ultimately reasonably smooth.   For example I’ve just started writing a play with eight characters in it and yesterday with

Mikey's week as a volunteer. Monday began as every Monday should with a dose of the Creative Play group at St George's. Its a small group but its the group I started volunteering for first. Its the group that made me want to continue and when we first started this group in the first session we had 3 people. We struggled to build and maintain Creative Play but as soon as we got a consistent amount of young people changes started to occur. Instead of interrupting during best and worst they sit and listen and enjoy people's stories. Instead of running round the circle they get their chairs and sit down and wait for instructions, they still scrape the chairs along the floor (I hate that sound) but im working on that. Its just good to see your having an affect on people for the better. I started Tuesday with a training session with the lovely Gemma Whelan. Was just a session to go over the basics of volunteering, why we play games ? What does this game do for the group ?

A sneaky blog from James Budenburg... Hi, Black company pieces are coming on great. The writings brilliant and it's starting to come off the page now which is great to see. I won't talk about any spoilers though so you'll have to come see them. Anyway, there's a song in ours and its posing trouble. It's good trouble because its creative trouble. It was all fine and dandy at first because you know, we had a bit of a sing and it sounded like we had something. Of course then the chords change everything, Merv went away and put it to music, he's done a wonderful job and we messed about with that on Thursday and what he's got is really nice. The chorus still poses a threat but we've got the first verse down so more progress will come!   Of course then there's the script round that too which is another challenge. The comedy in it means it's quite easy to self indulge, especially when your laying down with a guitar and haven't got a clue what to d

I went old school on Monday night in Sapphire Company.   By which I mean I took in a whole load of poetry and writing and handed it out to groups and said make something.   This was something I used to do much more of in the early days of YTYT but as with all things as a director you move on and are constantly trying and testing new things which means that some of the older techniques get put in a draw and forgotten about. As I was planning the session and selecting the words to be used I wondered if going back over old ground was a bit of a cop out…the work we do in the youth theatre is so responsive, so considered…it’s all about building and applying new skills, new confidence, new understanding…I was worried it might be a backwards step.   Still something made me want to try it out anyway. Happily the standard of work produced by all of the groups indicated that retro was the best direction I could have gone In.   The instructions I gave with the literature

Jack Iredale has blogged about rehearsals of our current Gold Company show...The A to Z of Shakespeare Mention the name Shakespeare to the average person on the street, and you’re bound to get a few different reactions. Some people will know his name and that he wrote Romeo and Juliet and some will think it’s just a bunch of pretentious acting with a load of thee’s and thou’s thrown in. However, a select few will be able to tell you 26 different things about him. And that select few is Yew Tree’s very own gold company.   Very much in the same vein as our last show “The History Of Theatre”, our latest project “The A-Z of Shakespeare” aims to educate as well as entertain, and so far it is managing to do both. Current highlights include the building, burning and rebuilding of the globe theatre, to a barrage of insults reminiscent of a rap battle, as well as Ellen’s’ fantastic rant about the character of Juliet. However, as we are still only in the devising process, other equally hilari

Anyone who knows me knows that I find comedy tricky.   Firstly I’m not a funny person…I find small talk tricky which is a measure how comedically challenged I am.   Secondly as I have explained on numerous occasions if you imagine a spectrum of humour that encompasses all the comedy in the world I only find a very small bit of it funny.   All of that adds up to a challenging relationship between me and comedy. This week at Yew Tree Youth Theatre however I have laughed and laughed and laughed…and what’s made it better is that I’ve been laughing with some of the funniest people I know.   The first delightful laughter-filled experience was on Thursday at Black Company where we had the read through for the plays we’ve been developing over the last few weeks...I have been somewhat up against it writing six ten minute plays in a fortnight alongside writing a research report, facilitating Connections at Kendal, having a foot with sprained ligaments and all the other thing

And the last guest blog is from Amy T Hello fellow members of Yew Tree Youth Theatre! As a proud member of Sapphire, I am blogging about starting Gold Company this weekend. I had time to get over being the first murdered citizen in my first ever game of Gold version mafia (Michael, I blame you) before A to Z of Shakespeare kicked off! I have to say, the first ever rehearsal went very well and I was glad to be a part of it. You know you're a lucky member of the group when your word to make into an action is 'swagger' and there were many hilarious ideas of the word portrayed. From funny walks of fools to physical throne making; the Shakespearian theme was spread across the company in a joyous way. What also spread was a wonderfully done (imaginary) fire on the Globe theatre with very talented sound effects from Jack. 8 letters down, 18 to explore next week! Last but by no means least was Emma's lovely version of the laughing game, with heads on bellies and jokes a

Amy W writes about Gold Company's rehearsal At Gold Company, we began with a simple game of Cowboys and Indians, followed by an utterly frustrating game of Mafia, in which I knew who two of the four mafia in from the first death but was, tragically, killed before I could unmask the villains. Perhaps I should move on now. Next, we started working on our new performance. We made a fantastic throne for “Queen Elizabeth”, represented Shakespearean words, enjoyed a Royal Shakespeare Company bow, contemplated with Hamlet, attended Shakespeare’s funeral, walked like fools, reconstructed the globe and visited Shakespeare’s hometown. Particular highlights included the amazing globe we made and the pretty ridiculous ideas for the fools section. To top it all off we played just about the weirdest game I've ever played, and I've been going to Yew Tree for years. So all together, it was a rather productive and enjoyable Saturday morning.

Harry finally writes his debut blog How have I managed to go so long without ever writing a blog? Hell. Black company on Thursday was wonderful, exactly what I needed after a rubbish day at college and work. A joyful game of coconuts, in which I failed miserably, but never mind ha..             Today we had the chance to read our scripts with our groups for the first time, which was great to see how it had all turned out. I loved the script and the dynamics of our group within seconds of reading and I instantly wanted to get up and start rehearsing the piece before we had even got to the end of the first page! I can’t express enough my delight towards this project, it is something completely different to anything I’ve done for a while at Yew Tree, and I’m ridiculously excited for it to get into full swing!             After various read throughs with my group, we started to briefly block our piece, experimenting and trying out different ideas, and I felt that a

Jack's thoughts on Tomorrow I'll Be Happy - he was at work all day when we compiled the group one... So here we are, another Connections come and gone. And, like it has been all the years before, it’s been fantastic. It’s the third and last connections I’ll get to act in, and quite frankly, I couldn’t have thought of a better type of play to do for the hat-trick. It’s been a play that has required a lot of digging and discovery, and I know that every single one of us involved has come along so far because of it. And we couldn’t have done it without brilliant directors like Sarah and Danny, as well as each other. Constructing Darren’s character has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve had so far in acting, finding out new things about him right up to the performance at Kendal itself, but it’s also been one of the more rewarding, expanding my comfort zone of what I can portray on stage. And it’s all because of the family we’ve constructed since last year. As for Kendal itse

In case you hadn’t noticed we performed “Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy” at the NT Connections regional showcase at the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal this weekend…we’ve been pretty vocal about it so it would have been hard for anyone vaguely connected to YTYT to miss.   On the face of it, it shouldn’t be that big a deal 4 hour round trip to perform a play we’ve done a number of performances already and watch a bit of youth theatre while we’re there.   The thing is that description couldn’t be further from the truth.   It is the most fulfilling inspiring weekend.   We get to meet people from all over the region and from the National Theatre too who are as passionate about young people making quality theatre as we are.   I get to watch actors, from my company and others, rise up further than they have ever risen and you know that they will be forever strengthened and affirmed by the experience.   You get to share and challenge opinions about plays, productions, performances an

Other things happened as well as Connections this week...Olena tell us about one of them... Okay, so I've just started watching Star Trek (the one with Chris Pine and his awesome cheek bones) and after a long week of catching up with school, revision, a drama controlled assessment and watching Iron Man Three, I remembered I was asked to write a blog.   So a blog. Blog. Bloggy, blog, blog, blog. Blogging.   Oh! A wild bog appears! What do you do? Write? Bag? Pokémon? Run? You chose Write. For the past two sessions at Sapphire we have been work-shopping 'The "Happily" Ever After' (which is a far better title that 'I'm really bored so I'm going to write something') and I have to say it was very weird seeing something of your own creation being performed in front of your very eyes, but, nevertheless, I have always been a good appreciator of everything weird; just the other day I started stroking the walls of the cinema because they are made out of cu

A blog from the "Tomorrow I'll Be Happy," cast as they sign out of Connections 2013 after a marvellous Kendal weekend Kendal is always a pleasure. This year was the last year I could be in Connections because I'm going to university in September, so I was determined to make the most of this trip to Kendal! I spent two days with some excellent people, performing a wonderfully directed and polished piece of theatre in a beautiful building in a lovely little town and to be quite honest, it hasn't sunk in yet. I'm lying in bed and it's 2am and the only conclusion I can really come to is that you learn so many things in Kendal - not only do you step up your own performance, but you get chance to see many talented young people in plays that they've worked super hard on and it is inspiring! I have been absolutely overloaded with lovely things all weekend - new information and great ideas and different faces. It's been crazy, it feels like we've been