Youth Theatre network meeting notes 6th february 2008
Attendees:
Carol Burgess (DYT and Next
Stage)
Richard Conlon (Playwright, based in Shaftesbury)
Bianca Judd (Dorchester Youth Theatre)
Lorna Rees (Activating Youth Programme Coordinator)
Nikki Salmond (Cranborne Youth Theatre)
Jacqui Trent ( Weymouth Drama Club)
Talk about yourself, your groups and what you’re doing in theatre at the moment:
Dorchester Youth Theatre (DYT)are working with Bianca on their skill base this term and at the moment are doing a few weeks on Commedia Dell Arte. They’ve got some money to spend on guest practitioners and Jacqui at Weymouth Drama Club (WDC) has suggested people who WDC have used in the past who were really good. DYT will also be performing at the Dorchester Festival at some point (the Dorchester Festival happens around the May Bank holiday).
Richard Conlon is a playwright who has recently relocated to Dorset and is working on a play about climate change (and making a mythology to explain it) with Woodruffe School . He went to Lyme Regis when he moved here as he was excited about the Ann Jellicoe/community play connection the area boasts. He’s awaiting an arts council application outcome, at which point he may be working with youth theatres in the region on the project by way of outreach workshops. Richard has also written many youth theatre plays and gave out postcards about Hope Springs .
Nikki is the development manager at Cranborne Youth Theatre and they’re working on a musical piece called Rainbow Fool, all about a divided community. They’re staging this not only in the village hall in Cranborne, but are taking it to the Verwood Hub for one night on the 19 th of April. After the LNF (Local Network Fund) grant they got £5000 from the Chalk and Cheese Foundation, but are looking for more funding to keep running costs going.
Weymouth Drama Club are now a 90 strong company and they’ve just finished their pantomime (and are all a bit exhausted!). Their new-ish group for young people with learning disabilities is going very well.
Quick re-cap on Activating Youth:
Lorna explained that we’re coming to the end of the activity for the Activating Youth Programme of events and that we’re thinking about how to continue and expand on this years development work.
The reaction to the programme and the training events which had been run was very positive, and members felt that the programme was useful and pertinent to their own youth theatres.
It was felt that the masterclass practitioner training was of real use to youth theatre leaders, and that now a critical mass of attendees has been established so that future events should be better attended.
We also talked about how we talk to each other – Activate doesn’t want to deluge people with messages – but if an e-group is something that would be used then it’s something we could set up.
If not then we can look more into having monthly bulletins for the group members in the same way that theatre and dance do.
Quarterly youth theatre networks were still thought to be of use, but we will alternate venue and evenings.
A Youth Theatre Festival for Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole
All the group would be very excited about a county-wide youth theatre festival. Youth Theatres are quite isolated in this area, especially out of the conurbation of Bournemouth and Poole , and it’s important that we address this.
It was suggested that we could take a youth dance festival model with each group performing a piece in the evening. This is more tricky with theatre work though, and not all groups would have a handy 15 minute play/extract to perform, but it would be a good way of showcasing and sharing work. Short plays could be shown over a few evenings in one theatre venue.
It could be possible for a festival to happen in Lyme Regis, general agreement that it would be good to get the youth groups out of their ‘safe’ home venues and out somewhere, but that there may be some logistical difficulties in it taking place there. Activate would need to factor in transport costs for any funding bid.
Another model might be a full ‘play in a day’ where each youth theatre works with other practitioners to create a play in a day, which is then shared. The young people could be split up and work with other young people from other areas getting them to try something new. We’d get in guest practitioners and could also mix up existing youth theatre staff to facilitate. The ‘play in a day’ model would be a leveller of the groups, and would hopefully be an exciting antidote to the competitive festival model such as the Dorset Drama League (who run out of Shaftesbury Arts Centre and get professional adjudication from the guild of drama adjudicators).
October half term is a possibility, but it might not be very long in terms of planning time.
Activate will collate all the ideas from this session and consultation with other youth theatres in the network will come up with a strategy for youth theatre development including, at its heart, a youth theatre festival for Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole.
Something for further on into the future…
We’d love to commission a play as the ‘youth theatre network’ which was thematically linked (and maybe held by one guest director) which would be in say, six parts, all about 15 minutes long, and each part performed by a different youth theatre in the county. We’d then piece the final play together at a large-scale festival event.
National Profile
Lorna is going to look into sending a small delegation from Dorset youth theatres to the National Big Youth Theatre Festival this year as a reccy for youth theatres who might be interested (as Lyme Youth Theatre did last year). This might need to be self funding, or we could apply for some cash as part of a bigger grant. Lyme Youth Theatre did this last year and were very excited by the festival and are taking more young people this year.
Things to see and do….
- Rainbow Fool by Cranborne Youth Theatre on at the Verwood Hub on the 19 th April
- James Son of James by Fabulous Beast looks brilliant (16-19 th April) and is on at Lighthouse, Poole
The Polish Play which Richard was involved in tour schedule is here: http://www.farnhammaltings.com/news/current/162/133/131/polish_play.aspx
And information about 'Face; The Play' adapted by Richard is here: http://www.heinemann.co.uk/Series/product.aspx?isbn=9780435233440
And if you haven’t done so already, do please join:
NYAT http://www.nayt.org.uk/frontpage.asp
ENYAN http://www.enyan.co.uk/
