What's happening at YTYT

As Alice* has done such an excellent blogging job of 2015 in review I have gone on a little bit of a tangent in mine and offer you what I think are the five best guest blogs of this year.   The process of choosing them involved a lovely hour or so this morning with a cup of tea reliving the year through the many and varied voices of our generous and eloquent guest bloggers. All of those that volunteered a blog at some point this year – like those of all the years the blog has been written (it all began on the 27th of March 2009 ) have created a vibrant and unique picture of what we do – so if that includes you, regardless as to whether or not you are mentioned in this short summary, remember you are greatly appreciated. Without further ado let us start with my first pick – and so we begin with Sam Winder’s blog of March the 8 th – a review of Alice in Wonderland – the WYTDC production I wrote and directed.   I’ve picked this for a couple of reasons – the first is the quality of

Here it is - the 2015 Review by the very talented Alice Narey This year I have become Sarah’s ‘tip top blogger’ (her words not mine) therefore I have the honourable task of writing the review of 2015 at YTYT. This has been my first whole year at YTYT it would not have been the same without it – I think it's safe to say my year would have been pretty dull without it and I can never stop saying how much I regret not joining sooner. However, this year has been a fully packed, busy, testing and just wonderful! With amazing people. So here are some of my highlights and some of the projects I have been part of this year. I started 2015 with enthusiasm after experiencing my first Christmas shows. I walked into my first gold session of 2015 ready to go! We celebrated successful shows with games sessions and workshops of different kinds. I can honestly say I had never laughed so much – but I hadn’t seen anything yet. After that, I was fully loaded with inside jokes.

This weekend I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with a select band of Yew Tree Youth Theatre actors as they read stories to gallery going children at the Hepworth Wakefield.   We’ve been reading A Christmas Carol – and it’s gone down a treat – just as The Snow Queen did last weekend.   One of the best things about this project is being reminded of how unifying story telling is – at one point we had three generations of a family listening to young people tell traditional tales that have been passed down through decades and sometimes even centuries.   One of our storytellers summed it up nicely by saying, “The outside world stops when you’re listening to a story.” To which I would add that this is a precious thing indeed in a world where technology allows the outside to be constantly banging at your door. Obviously YTYT are in the business of making stories – it’s what we do best and this year we have told so many.   Every company has had the opportunity and pleasure of maki

Lowenna is our blogger this week Hellooo,  So this is my first yew tree blog as its my first time working with Sarah, up until this years Connections I was just a proud Crimson member (which I obviously still am) but hadn’t done anything outside of that group. Gemma and Sarah both work very differently, but I have to say I thoroughly enjoy every session that I have with both of them. With the Christmas shows over we are now focusing all our efforts into Connections. In Connections this year I am mainly part of the partner piece 'Darkness in the Light' which has been very interesting so far, we've spent a lot of time looking in depth about theories, myths, old wives tales and Greek gods and goddesses linked with eclipses or suns and moons. We've all been really interested and inspired and last week started to form the actual partnership piece which is starting to take form. We've tried to link in the things that we researched as well as the storyline from '

It’s been a glorious YTYT week – so manyChristmas shows …so many brilliant performances, so much support…so many lovely things said about the work we do…there really is nothing quite like it! I always think, as I watch the shows, how amazingly brave everyone is as so many of the actors are overcoming huge challenges to be where they are…whether it’s juggling academic demands with their extra curricular ambitions, or managing the responsibilities life throws at young people, transcending the issues that come from a lack of confidence or sidestepping the myriad of other things that can get in the way of people achieving their potential.   Each one of the performers from the smallest to the tallest gave everything they possibly could to make the Christmas shows as good as they could be…that effort and energy was, as it is always, entirely appreciated… As a result of that bravery, effort and energy this year people sang on stage who had never sung in public before…people made char

The one and only Sam MG ladies and gentlemen,,, know that guest blog’s usually just surmise the week in Yew Tree, but as this is my first ever one (I honestly don’t know how Sarah has let me get away with it for nine months) then I wanted to just do a tad more. From day one, I’ve had a weird relationship with Yew Tree Youth Theatre. The idea of waking up at 9am every Saturday morning (as a Gold Company member) seemed alien – and, quite frankly, absurd – even though I knew I was going to enjoy the three hours I spent performing theatrics to my heart’s content. It would get to Friday night and a feeling of dread would enter my stomach, knowing that I’d have more or less the same amount of sleep I get when I have to go to college the next day; and yet, not a single moment passes in those three hours in which I feel discontented. This, to put it simply, offbeat relationship doubled recently with the start of Connections. 5 until 7 on a late Saturday afternoon seems simply inconvenien

Hello again, it is I Brittany, ex-Sapphire member now living the student life in Birmingham.   Although I may have left the wonderful Yew Tree over 18 months ago now I never truly left it behind, especially since my own brother is still a part of the family, and I try to keep up to date with everything YTYT anywhere I go.   This then led me to skipping a lecture and boarding a train from New Street to Wakefield all in the name of Festive Fairytales on Thursday, single-handedly one of the best decisions I have made in a while.   Because they were incredible. I have never been in the audience for a full night of performances (having been in a play up until 2013 and then only being able to attend Sapphire dress rehearsals in 2014) so this night was a first for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Firstly we had the joy of Orange Company with ‘One Foggy Christmas Eve’ which told the story of Rudolph and his saving of Christmas, a hilarious story made even better by the com

I’ve found myself thinking about productions in relation to instagram filters this week – I know this is weird – I’m aware my head should switch off more than it does but it doesn’t and so because I have these thoughts about the Christmas shows in relation to Instagram filters I’m going to share them with you in this blog… When we first start rehearsals in September we are under the influence of Normal: No filter applied we don’t really know what it’s going to look like, what we want it to look like – it is what it is…but what we spend the next three months doing is tinting and colouring and highlighting and shading til we get what we want… So let’s take this show by show – and in the spirit of equality I’m going to list them in the order of the techs… The Frog Prince is filtered with Lo-fi: Enriches color and adds strong shadows through the use of saturation and "warming" the temperature I love this piece – we have a puppet, we have a cast of excellent people an

Sam's last Sapphire show needed blogging - so here we are... It’s been a while since my last blog. I do hope you won’t hold it against me because, in honesty, it’s something I have missed. Since starting college, I have had little time for reflection and so, with a week off from Connections, I have had a strange lull this weekend before music centre concerts and Christmas Shows (which I assume you all have your tickets for eeek) and all manner of things roll into action. I’ve basically taken today, inside and sheltered from the wind – for going on my weekly bike ride would have been treacherous – to be ready for the week ahead. Sapphire Company, in what is my last year there – if I may stifle a sob – will be performing ‘The Princess and the Frog.’ As a last show, I feel like it has been somewhat revolutionary for me. Breaking free of tradition, this year we will see narrators breaking rules of the last 5 Sapphire plays, a large degree of dancing and perhaps most shockingl

I want to congratulate all my actors in YTYT for getting this far.   You’ve pretty much learnt your lines, you’ve almost sorted your costumes, you’ve taken and responded to all the notes I’ve bombarded you with.   You’ve also taken the time to come to rehearsals even when you’ve been ill or school/college has been ridiculously demanding or when all the other stuff going on in your life has felt like it’s all too much.   I am fully aware that the expectations on you grow and grow and yet week after week you show up and give me the best you can.   I never take it for granted. The result of your effort is that our Christmas shows are just about there and so in order that you enjoy them to the fullest extent I wanted to remind you of something.   Your rehearsal room and your stage is a place to let all of your worldly responsibilities go…you can put them down for a while and let your world become smaller.   Then at the end when you pick them up again you are reenergized and strong

Tom Mason is our guest blogger! This is my first Yew Tree blog and I really don't know what to write…so here goes nothing. Eclipse is turning out to be a lot of firsts for me: my first time being double cast, my first time performing (and trying to be sociable) with this many people I've spent minimal or no time with in the past, my first time playing weird and wonderful games that Gemma won't allow into Crimson for some reason... But I guess that all just comes with this being my first connections. In fact, as far as I can remember I may be the first person from Crimson to do a Connections (or a Yew Tree blog...eek). The first thing to strike me about Connections is how hands-on the process is; regular 5-7 rehearsals on a Saturday night in which we work tremendously hard for most of, if not all. I couldn't have prepared myself for how strange it is to be double cast either, creating your own character and then watching someone take it in a completely dif

It’s been another busy, busy week at YTYT – some of us had the pleasure of going to see the simply excellent Splendid Productions perform at The Lowry on Tuesday.   Their production of The Odyssey was raucous, chaotic and entirely engaging   - a completely original take on a very old tale of epic adventure, war and ego.   Yet again Kerry Frampton’s ability to stop that chaos with the most beautiful, poignant character narrative is stunning.   The whole thing was a master class in the possibility of performance. One of things that takes up quite a bit of time at the moment is directing two pretty large scale performances for the New Year so Friday and Saturday involved full on rehearsals for them…Peter Pan is in January and tickets are on sale here – it includes a number of lovely YTYT members and promises to be a fantastical treat.   The other production “Once Upon a Fairy Tale, “ in partnership with WYTDC, is epic with a cast of 100’s.   I thoroughly enjoyed starting to create

Tom's blog for this week There’s a look I get, when I describe my typical week at yew tree. It’s a cross between sheer amazement and slight worry for my sanity, as I list every day of the week being filled with a variety of activities. But the amount I do gives me experiences very few people have access to, and so this blog is going to be my attempt to allow you a rudimentary insight into what I do. Because frankly, I wouldn’t change it for the world. Now, we start at Sapphire Company, who this year are performing “The Princess and the Frog” as their Christmas show. It’s a play that follows the traditional Sapphire style of subtle wit and fast paced dialogue, but it comes with its own brand new set of challenges. One in particular, being the 3ft frog puppet that must be operated by 3 man team. Lip syncing, stance control and movement are all skills the teams have had to master, and I have to compliment Gabe in particular for the hard work he’s evidently   put in to make the

Black Company's Hannah Mullen... First blog post, go easy on me Yew Tree readers. After a few years of watching and supporting Yew Tree and their many brilliant productions, I recently I have had my nights free to finally give it a go. Not regretting it one bit…yet. I was apprehensive about my first session at Black Company but was welcomed by the enthusiastic and lovely Sarah (she paid me to write that) and the friendly Yew Tree members.   After being introduced to ‘Best and Worst’, a task that involves us racking our brains to remember what exciting or unexciting things we have got up to in the week, the time had then come to act, and a daunting prospect it was. I have often been asked and told by other people that all we thespians do is embody trees in drama, and every time I make sure I reply, with a deadpanned face, “no” as if that was the most foolish thing to have ever come out of their mouths. So, in the first session of Black Company, what was

It’s that time of the year again when the Christmas performances are just around the corner and the productions aren’t quite where they need to be…this last stage is hard as there are no easy fixes…we’re into finding the technical precision that turns something from mediocre to magical…so for the benefit of my brilliant actors and so that their parents and supporters understand the challenge ahead of them I’ve prepared a how to guide to make your performance and our production reach it’s potential… Firstly comes line security – the more you know and understand the entire script including but not exclusively your lines and your cues the more you have a solid foundation from which to do everything else you need to do! Secondly vocal quality makes a big difference…we are finding time to do some vocal work in some of the company sessions but for the older actors any work they can do between sessions on projection, expression, articulation, intonation is going to make such a positi

Toni is our excellent guest blogger this week... Connections is back! You probably weren't very aware that it was away because of how quick it seems to have been since we performed Hacktivists at Kendal but we're more than ready to say 'welcome back' to the 5-7 Saturday night slot. And so, with a few extra recruits for this year, tonight's rehearsal was the first read through with the set casts and a time for us to discuss our thoughts on the play Eclipse and the partner piece we are creating along side it: The Darkness in the Light. The thing that struck me the most while listening to the read through was how utterly different Eclipse is from Hacktivists. Pretty much the entirety of the play is written in verse with rhymes- a complete contrast to the naturalist dialogue of last year. Hearing the lines read out, though, suddenly gave parts of the play a definite eerie sense and others a more playful feel that works very well- especially with the links of paga

Although I am used to Black Company being delightful but this week at Black Company was full of extra, additional, unanticipated creative delights. As our current production for Festive Tales (Tickets On Sale NOW !!) is a physical theatre piece, in amongst the Best and Worsts and games this term our warm up has included physical theatre exercises.   These creative tasks have been pursued to create a confidence in physical theatre that will enhance our performance but our intention is not usually to create anything that will transfer out of the rehearsal room. This week however something magical happened and I’ve spent some time thinking about what the ingredients were that made this particular creative task so impressive.   Was it the task? The actors? The partnerships? The music? What turned the exercise into something so strong it had to be shared and so has formed the foundations of the start of our production? After some thought I’ve come to the conclus

Leah is our second blogger... BOOM! First blog for this year’s Connections! Mind you, this is my second guest blog so please don’t expect anything spectacular.   So yesterday we had the auditions for our Connections play this year called Eclipse and as always they were a fantastic start to what is going to be, possibly, the best Connections I have taken part in yet. As always, everyone did magnificently! I honestly do not know how Sarah does what she does! Everyone really tried hard and pushed themselves and the decision that she was left with was one of the hardest things I could ever dream of doing. I saw sides to people I have never seen before which both shocked and delighted me (along with the overwhelming, crushing nerves that racked my body).     Tom Osborne started us off with a powerful portrayal of Klondike in the first scene. Sam was next