Directing “Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy” Part 2

I blogged a little while ago about directing Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy with Yew Tree Youth Theatre and NT Connections were kind enough to ask me to blog again after we’d completed our home performances.  Hence this sequel…

We’re in our Connections break at the moment, the home performances are all done and dusted and it’s a couple of months until we have the highlight of our YTYT year and perform at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal.  This is the point in the project where I reflect on what we’ve done so far and the director’s report from the NT director (Jack) who visited Wakefield and with all this in mind think about what comes next.

The first things I have to reflect upon and indeed celebrate are the huge achievements of the actors.  The cast pushed themselves so hard, developing characters with more bravery, truth and integrity than they have ever achieved before.   They all stepped out of their comfort zone to such good effect and what’s lovely is it’s not just me who thought so…our show report praised the maturity and care put into the challenge of bringing the characters to life.  We talked a lot about ensuring we treated the issues with respect, that we played the characters and the story not the tragedy.  We discussed balance and what it was to live the lives of the character.  We experimented and redrafted and thought and debated and the result was something to be unequivocally proud of.   It’s so lovely as a director to see such well earned pride manifest itself in the smiles and words of young people who have put their heart and soul into something so very special.

The next thing I find myself contemplating is the response of the audience to the play.  I have to admit being nervous about it’s reception when we opened our doors to the friends and family of the cast.  Such a brutal, hard hitting story was bound to get a reaction; I was both curious and apprehensive about what that reaction might look like.   Apparently I didn’t need to worry at all; so many people came out of our production of “Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy,” praising it greatly.  They were hugely impressed by the way the cast carried off the darkness of the piece and the intensity of the story.  Intriguingly however a lot of them then added to their praise that they didn’t know how to feel about it.  After a few of these comments it occurred to me that it was because the playwright, Jonathan Harvey, has purposefully in his construction of the play made us think rather than feel.  In the way he offers the story (it runs chronologically backwards for those who haven’t seen or read it) we can’t get carried away with the fate of the characters.  We are forced instead to look at the decisions they make, why they make them and what should/could have happened instead.  When you’re dealing with a subject such as hate crime this is vital stuff…Jonathan is a clever, clever man…and of course Brecht needs to take a bit of a bow too.

Which then leaves me in the position of deciding what is next.  There is certainly work to do as we reprise the production.  Some of which I already knew, some of which was insightfully signposted by Jack’s feedback which was full of generous praise and ideas.  (Just as an aside here, I have to thank both him and Lucy at Connections for fixing what could have been a nightmare of a date mix up so smoothly.)  When we go back into rehearsals we’ll be thinking a little more about set and sound, we’ll be thinking about the relationship between actors and audience and we’ll be ensuring that all the performances are consistently where they need to be.  A nice set of challenges to inspire even greater storytelling, even greater achievements and consequently even greater pride!

If you want to find out more about Yew Tree Youth Theatre please visit www.yew-tree.com or http://www.facebook.com/YewTreeYouthTheatre or our blog www.yewtreeyouththeatre.blogspot.co.uk where a guest youth theatre member and I blog each week

Sarah Osborne

 If you would like to write a blog post for us, get in touch on connections@nationaltheatre.org.uk

Travelling into the Future by Adele Thomas

Adele Thomas

This is my first year as a Connections Director, and already I have traversed the whole country, from the beautiful countryside of Cirencester, through the snow to Stanley, battled North London traffic and had a trip to the seaside of Bexhill. I have been given tea and shelter from gale force winds from a lovely lady in Kemble, been kept awake all night by party fiends in Newcastle and I have stared out at the sun bouncing off the sea and onto the identical beach huts of Eastbourne. There's always been a lot of drama, and that's before I've even see the shows!

Each of the plays from this year's selection demands such different things from its young performers, and in turn, the choice of play says so much about the company itself! "We're all ALIENS!!!" bellows one performer when I ask them why their group chose Morna's playful examination of the traumas of growing up. It is so exciting to see so many young people, and so many teachers, leaders and directors engaging with new writing in such a wide ranging way, an experience that will no doubt have a powerful, if subtle, effect on how these young performers go forward as theatre makers of the future. When I was young, drama was my life, but while I knew you could possibly become an actor, I had no idea that ordinary, working class kids like me could actually ‘make theatre’: that we could also become writers, directors, producers, lighting designers, designers and on and on.

Engaging with living, contemporary texts does something different to our understanding of the world. It asks young people to look around at the narratives of our time, it demystifies the notion that great plays are written by dead white men. And it asks them to respond with complete freshness to the creative challenges presented: from hip hop battles, to staging a circus, to the quiet simplicity of speaking directly to the audience, there something extremely special about being the first group to embark on the adventure of unpicking a play for the first time!

I have been made to feel so welcome at some fantastic hidden spaces across the country, from the super cool Karamel Club, with its industrial studio space and amazing bar to conversing with the staff in Bexhill about their theatrical stories. Sadly, moving out of the cities, the effects of austerity are all too clear. In Stanley, the Starlight Theatre is packed with a huge audience of the cast's peers, the atmosphere is bouncing and the staff couldn't be more attentive. In a month’s time, this venue will not exist, the staff will be out of work and Stanley will have lost a vital communal space. It is a bittersweet picture of the future of the arts in Britain, and it is in the hands of the young performers that I am travelling to see now as teenagers, that the future of live theatre lives. Which makes it all the more vital that programmes like Connections exist and that the process of making theatre is as open to the theatre makers of tomorrow as possible.

Adele Thomas is a theatre director. She recently spent nearly two years working on The Passion, produced by National Theatre Wales and creatively lead by actor Michael Sheen. Adele was a recipient of the Regional Theatre Young Director's Scheme and won a Writers Guild of Great Britain Award for her work with writers.

Directing “Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy”

Sarah Osborne

First some context about the company I direct, Yew Tree Youth Theatre have been around for about 16 years now. We’re based in Wakefield and have over 200 members aged between 6 and 24 years old who meet in 10 different companies every week.  2013 will see our ninth Connections play staged and my ninth Connections play directed.  Despite being something of an old hand I am constantly surprised and delighted by the discoveries made on the journey.

We run Connections as an enhancement project.  It’s for members of the youth theatre who want to be involved in a more intensive rehearsal process and performance opportunity over and above their usual weekly session.  The company have a significant say in the play choice and then audition before casting, it’s the only Yew Tree Youth Theatre project we run where formal auditions take place.

Our connections play “Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy,” by Jonathan Harvey is a tough play. It’s tough to direct and tough for actors and it’ll be tough for the audience to watch.  However it is an important story that needs to be told and that makes it worth the effort.  Already the cast have had to challenge their own assumptions about society and put themselves in situations they would never imagined they would have to confront.  Equally however they have had the opportunity to come to terms with things in their own lives.  There is no denying that exploring and rehearsing a play like this teaches young people as much about the world they live in as the craft of making quality theatre. 

One of the challenges in directing Youth Theatre is that the director has to fulfill so many roles.  I have no costume department, no designer, no publicity department, no budget, no nothing. My only luxury is an inspiring co director who being a senior youth theatre member, in addition to his career as an actor, has a different insight into both the cast and the play.  Oh and I have a talented lighting practitioner who helps me negate the need for anything but the most minimal of set.

This minimalist approach however allows me to concentrate on what I believe to be the heart of the Connections experience, acting.  We are making the most of being able to explore both the craft and the application of acting in such depth with “Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy,” Asking questions of the text and the characters, exploring the world of the play.  We’re asking the cast aged between 13 and 18 to rid themselves of their own idiosyncrasies and coping strategies so they can get to grips with an entirely different person.  We talk a lot in rehearsal about humility and vulnerability as actors and equally about truth and integrity as performers.

In terms of progress we’re getting there – our first full run last week was interesting…it showed us how far we have come and how far we have to go.  There is a lot of work to do but already I see the way that the cast are developing as a result of being able to do something as valuable and challenging as Connections and that is still as rewarding the first time I witnessed it…

If you want to find out more about Yew Tree Youth Theatre please visit www.yew-tree.com or http://www.facebook.com/YewTreeYouthTheatre or our blog www.yewtreeyouththeatre.blogspot.co.uk where a guest youth theatre member and I blog each week

30th January 2013

Rehearsing for Home Performances

Highly Sprung Performance Co.-

Jim Cartwright’s The Mobile Phone Show 

3x Blogs by Cast Members

 

Hannah Pryal, 16

Rehearsing for Jim Cartwright’s new play, Mobile Phone Show, has been an amazing experience so far, and continues to be so. The play itself is an eclectic mixture of force, heartfelt emotion and a touch of weirdness, which is brilliant fun to bring to the performance space. The fact that Highly Sprung is a physical theatre group means that we have taken a truly unique look at the script and really explored the various ways in which we can present what Jim Cartwright has written on paper, hopefully presenting something new and exciting for our audiences - it is definitely exciting for us!

Rehearsals have been fast paced and sometimes a little bizarre but a great opportunity for everyone to get involved and completely forget their inhibitions - there has been running, shouting, prancing and inevitably a lot of laughing but we are gradually working our way through the scenes, creating and developing some really innovative ideas.

So far I have absolutely loved exploring Cartwright’s new script and cannot wait to perform it with Highly Sprung!

 

Brian McAuley, 17 

I have immensely enjoyed applying Highly Sprung’s innovative and original style of performing to Jim Cartwright’s new piece. The friendly atmosphere, creative inputs and teamwork shown by everyone involved has made me feel comfortable and part of something unique and exciting. Warm ups and vocal exercises have been invaluable. The use of physical theatre has transformed the piece giving it a distinctive "Highly Sprung" feel. The Highly Sprung team have directed our rehearsals constructively but always allowing the performers to be creative. Being involved in a National Theatre project has been a wonderful opportunity and I hope this will bring further shows for Highly Sprung performers to be involved in. 

 

Nicola Woodward, 14

Highly Sprung Thursday workshops have been focusing on rehearsing and creating Mobile Phone Show by Jim Cartwright.  As Highly Sprung is a physical theatre group we have a different and unique approach to the show than most other groups, this means that our version will be significantly different to other theatre groups and performance companies and hopefully give the audience an experience they will never forget. I find being part of Highly Sprung is amazing especially when we are rehearsing a show such as Mobile Phone Show. I find the experience of working together in a fun environment and with people that you care about makes the experience of performing especially special and well supported throughout the whole process of rehearsals and the shows.  During rehearsal it can be hard work but it's worth it as it is great experience and allot of fun as the excitement builds towards the performances.

I believe Mobile Phone Show has great potential as a great show, I have never come across a show/ script quiet like this one however I am thoroughly enjoying every minute of the production process. It is different to most other shows as it has a strong storyline that is relatable to many even if they are un aware of it at this point in time with guidelines and restrictions everywhere in life. It can be a light hearted or hard hitting show depending on how much you read into its words and actions.  But whatever you take from it is going to be amazing and that is a promise. A great experience for performers and audience alike. 

If you would like to write a blog post for us, please get in touch on connections@nationaltheatre.org.uk

The Directors' Weekend

Rob Watt

Producer, Connections

 

The Connections Directors' weekend took place from the 9-11th November. Each year we offer this weekend as the official start of Connections, where all of the directors of Connections shows are invited to London to explore their play with the writer and to network with other directors.

This year we decided to be ambitious. We wanted to make the best use of the small amount of time that everyone gets together and to offer the most resource filled and comprehensive training and networking weekend we could.

So we created the opportunity to select up to 5 skills workshops across the weekend, in addition to the usual full day session with the writers, and a session with the representatives from Partner Theatres. Oh, and add to that the chance to see a smash hit NT show for a tremendous price and a social gathering and you've got one comprehensive weekend.

How comprehensive? 48 skills workshops, 70 hours of workshops with writers, 130 tickets to One Man Two Guvnors and over 350 people involved across the weekend. That comprehensive.

We're always looking to improve and develop what we offer so right now we're gathering feedback on the weekend in order to make sure that the workshops we offer are of value, that the information we give is clear and that the catering we provide fills that nagging hunger hole.

We heard fantastic things about the movement workshops so we'll make sure that's there next year, we're already looking at where we can hold the festivities next year in order to make the weekend as efficient as possible and we know there we lots of fans of the chocolate provided in the registration pack...

Not only that, but we'll also have a series of videos available to those taking part in Connections on the brand new Connections Community very soon. So if you missed out on a workshop we might have some highlights for you to enjoy.

All that's left for me to do is to thank everyone involved in the weekend, from those who took part, the workshop leaders, the writers and the volunteers who have up their time to support us all weekend. Now let's put it all into action and enjoy making theatre!