#NTCFest - Mobiles and rehearsals...

Written by Jessica Mulle, Jigsaw Arts Youth Theatre 

It’s amazing how much refining can be done when you really put in everything. I think I speak for everyone when I say this really is the hardest we’ve worked at something, and we have come such a long way – as performers, in our show itself, as a company and as people.

Performing at the National Theatre really is a dream come true for everyone. As a young person who aspires to be a professional actor, this is so much more than I would have dreamed of achieving at 17. Being told that we were to perform in the Olivier Theatre in front of 1200 made all our hard work and effort so worthwhile! Once we heard our result, our company knew that we had to rise to a new challenge. Working with the NT Connections directors has given us insight in what it is like to perform in a theatre of this scale. Talking to the NT directors about what technical elements we would love to include within the performance we have been astounded at the resources we have been offered. This has really opened our eyes to the scale of what we are performing on. Furthermore, having the opportunity to perform to the writer Jim Cartwright, blew us all away, it really was inspiring and so helpful to hear his insight.

The whole company loves Mobile Phone Show – it moves rapidly from hilarious to heart wrenching to poignant and the audience are swept along in this range of emotions. We feel so privileged to be working with the NT Connections team who have invested so much in us. Having the opportunity to work on such an amazing play with people I think of as family and doing something we love is incredible.

What I’ve enjoyed most about this experience is seeing our production blossom, friends and family who watched our original performance commented on how they couldn’t believe how much refining and polishing we had achieved by the time we performed at the Arts Depot. Once we had been notified of our success and impending performance at the Olivier Theatre this inspired us all to be even greater.  We knew we had more work to do to bring our play to such a massive performance space and we have all relished this and are proud of our achievements.

Mobile Phone Show includes a lot of chorus work which was unfamiliar to many of our group and was possibly the biggest challenge, certainly for me. We had to ensure that the choreography was perfectly timed and executed and work on building our stamina to stay on stage for the whole play; this has been very demanding and a large focus of our work. Overcoming these challenges and seeing our chorus work come together has been incredible and everyone really has put in so much (including our amazing directors!).

Bringing our production to the National Theatre is something incredibly daunting, yet unbelievably exciting at the same time! Certainly there’s nothing that I’ve achieved in my life that I feel so proud of and I can’t believe how lucky we are to be given this opportunity.

We really can’t thank NT Connections, Jim Cartwright and everyone involved in this process enough. 

Watch Jessica perform in Mobile Phone Show by Jim Cartwright on Monday 8 July, Oliver Theatre

#NTCFest - My Journey to the Olivier Theatre

Written by REBECCA MILLER, Winstanley College

Since the first moment we received our scripts, the whole process has been a whirl of excitement and fun. From beginning at the start of the year, the cast has bonded into a tight knit of people, through sharing the joy of getting to Kendal to being told we’d made it to London. Since Kendal, everything took a step up. Rehearsals were infused with a lively beat instead of nervous energy and it’s all any of us can talk about. We’ve broadened our acting horizons in terms of practice techniques, such as projection practice on the field, ensuring we’re prepared to perform to over 1,000 people! We’ve focussed more on completely portraying the message of the play and doing such an emotional script justice, picking apart our lines and ensuring that poignant moments are done as well as they can be.

Actually going to perform on the Olivier Stage is an overwhelming thought – something I don’t think any of us have really come to grips with yet! It’s so exciting to think that we’re going to be performing on such a renowned stage, where actors who seem a million miles away have once performed. The experience to actually be part of a professional company for the first time for any of us is also enthralling – something any young actor only dreams of. To think that at the start of the year, we never expected to get to perform in London and were merely there for the experience and joy of the performance makes the position we’re in today so much more wonderful for us all.

The whole National Theatre process has been enjoyable, from making new friends to learning new techniques and actually feeling like – and being – a professional group of actors. We’ve been given an experience that is difficult to gain anywhere else as well as being able to see so many other groups perform and being exposed to all different kinds of interpretations. Not only on the broader scale, but on personal levels – for me, after our first performance, the reaction of the National Theatre representative was overwhelming because he was so amazed by what we’d managed to achieve in such a short space of time and his words of praise were something I’ll never forget.

Difficulties have definitely been found on long rehearsals, when the cast’s a bit tired and grumpy, but even then all it takes is a moment to appreciate the position we’re in before we’re back at it! For me, nerves especially really kicked in at Kendal as I think it did for everyone else, because it was our first time in front of an audience that we didn’t know and we just wanted everything to go right.

In the end, it’s all been like a bit of dream really. We’ve loved every minute; from the first read-through of the script to now actually having created and become our characters. The experience has been one I’ll never forget and I’ve cherished every moment!

See Rebecca perform in What are They Like? by Lucinda Coxan on Monday 8 July, Oliver Theatre