The exciting news this week is that online youth theatre has restarted. We decided to stay online as we feel it is the best way to ensure the safety of our students, families and staff at the moment and also to ensure we can provide a little bit of consistency in what may be a difficult few weeks ahead. We’ll keep in contact with venues and monitoring official advice but for now, unless the broadband network goes down (and god forbid that ever happens – if it does, coats on and we’ll find a big field) we’ll be there for our weekly sessions!
And those weekly sessions have been incredibly productive so far. We’re in the process of editing all the work we created from last term but with over four hours of footage it’s a bit of an epic process. From four minute film parodies, to stunt challenges, to self-tape Shakespeares, to home-made music videos there is a wealth of brilliant material that we can’t wait to share. If you fancy joining us in creating new work this term we’d love to see you – click here to check out our youth theatre pages and come and meet our groups.
As well as editing youth theatre footage we’ve also been busy adding to the past production pages on the website. There’s nearly a hundred shows up there now and the final 20 or so should be there by next weekend. But that’s not the end of it, and this is where we need some help. We’ve unearthed some proper gems over the last couple of weeks, like this undiscovered bit of Shakespeare from our production of Twelfth Night, filmed at the amazing outdoor theatre at Killruddery House, Bray in Ireland
or this snippet from Bugsy Malone which marked the beginning of our youth theatre's 10th birthday celebrations (we’re well into our 20s now)
But what is so tantalising is that there must be so much more out there (presumably the rest of Bugsy Malone is somewhere!) So if you’re reading this and you’ve been to see, or been in, or worked on one of our shows, or if you know someone who has then please have a good rummage around and send us any photos, films, or even memories you have and we will keep updating these pages for as long as we keep finding new stuff!
And to finish off, a quick pic from our first EVER youth theatre performance in 1996 at Woodside Ferry. We’re proud and very happy to still be in touch with several of the performers here and we’d love to hear from you if we’re not!
