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Showing posts from December, 2015

This Year at Yew Tree

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.

A Good Story Told Well

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 '

Enjoying the view from the top of the mountain

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

If the Christmas Shows were Instagram filters...

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