A blog about youth theatre in general and the City Varieties Youth Theatre and their first show in particular. By Lizi Patch. Director of CVYT and other things …
I have been running Youth Theatres for a flipping long time. I have never felt compelled to write about it. Until now. Until 70 young people filled the stunning little newly refurbished City Varieties Music Hall on the 27th July this year and shook, rattled and rolled their way through a frankly joyous production of Return To The Forbidden Planet.
This was a massive challenge for all concerned – 4 groups ranging in age from 8 to 21 years old, meeting at four different times, working on just the one musical … only to come together THE DAY BEFORE OPENING NIGHT. I refused to think about it.
“I’m not worried at all”, I’d tell anyone who dared to raise an eyebrow at the ludicrous task ahead of us.
“How’s that going to work then?” people insisted on asking.
“It’ll be fine” I answered, “I’m not worried at all”.
Dick Bonham, CVYT Co-Director would repeatedly look at me with a slightly knitted eyebrow…
“I’m not worried at all” I told him.
Jamie Fletcher, CVYT Co-director and Musical Director for the show said “Shiiiii…t” every now and again whenever the phrases ’cast of 70’, ‘tiny theatre’ , ’10 sessions to rehearse the whole musical’ were muttered.
“It’ll be fine” I intoned… “I’m not worried at all”.
And I wasn’t. I seriously was not worried. I was taking the lead on this show and had a good feeling about it. Oh yes.
I’m rubbish at recognising that the young actors I work with are a) young and b) not professional actors as yet. The reason I forget these two seemingly important things is because as far as I’m concerned I will provide them with expert guidance and training and then they just need to get on with the job in hand when the time comes – still supported, but they need to fly when it matters. They’re a company like any of the professional casts I work with and I tell them as much. More often than not they rise to it. Apart from the fact that they are paying to come along and work their arses off. Which always helps focus the mind.
I have found, without exception, that if you build your young ensemble with humour, skill, humility and a strong guiding hand then the theatre that they will produce will be exceptional – often far from flawless, but exceptional nonetheless.
The City Varieties Youth Theatre’s production of Return To The Forbidden Planet – their first show, which played to near capacity audiences at the end of last month – was one such piece of theatre. This one has been a bit special though, so bear with me as I think it is worth looking at why.
It all started in November 2011 when myself and Leeds theatre makers – Dick Bonham and Jamie Fletcher won the tender to develop and run the all new City Varieties Youth Theatre, housed in the newly refurbished City Varieties Music Hall in the heart of the city. It’s a beautiful space and my immediate thought was that we had a job on our hands. I am not someone who anyone would associate with old time music hall, or ‘tits ‘n teeth’ musicals, despite seeing the merit of both. However we were entrusted with the job and theatre is theatre as far as I’m concerned (and as much of today’s theatre hangs from the solid skeleton of variety it all becomes one). I knew that whatever our starting point, the end point would be the same: a company of skilled young actors producing shows that confounded the expectations of anyone who cared to sit in that beautiful theatre and watch them, oh, alongside all those who would be involved in making those shows – from the ground up.
Every show starts with the people.
People often ask me how I get on so easily with everyone. I don’t. It’s flippin’ hard sometimes. But I’ll give it my best shot every time. The bottom line is that we all like people who let us get on with what we’re good at whilst providing us with the tools to get on with it better. Knowing you are genuinely being recognised and supported as a unique individual with skills and potential is lovely. And rare. And it’s even better when it’s a two-way flow.
As a Theatre Director I thrive on this. I need young people with skills and potential (which I am thoroughly equipped to develop) because they make fantastic shows, and they teach me what’s it’s like to be a teenager these days, to better understand the world they are growing up in and how, as a youth theatre company we can create the best art to address their needs and opinions. It’s the perfect skills exchange. And they know I’m happy to learn and play alongside them. I’m the first to admit it when I’m out of my depth which helps them do the same. They know I know what I’m doing, but they also know how essential they are to the success of the show and the company. And this is why it works and the shows shine – because everyone is actually essential.
As far as I’m concerned you shoot yourself in the foot as a Director if you allow the same young people to grab the best roles every time whilst you drag the ensemble around like a whining dead weight. What a waste! There is an absolute and circular energy generated by a cast who understand the meaning of the word ensemble and are nurtured into creating a living breathing cast – those of you who saw Red Ladder’s community show The Promised Land, playing to sell out audiences at the Carriageworks in Leeds recently couldn’t fail to notice the faultless ensemble work where the show was so much more than the sum of it’s parts. Hairs on end stuff. Real skill and a real understanding of the power of pulling together.
I’m not saying it’s easy – the two questions I get asked the most when working with new youth theatre members on their first show with me are ‘what part do I have?’ closely followed by ‘what costume will I be wearing?’
My answer it doesn’t matter rarely cuts it in the first instance, because it DOES matter to the majority of performers. Understandably. At least the young ones are willing to admit it. The thing is when you become professional you generally know what part you’re going for and roughly how many lines you get to highlight with your highlighter pen held tightly in your focussed fist (and as a professional you’re probably not going to ask ‘what costume will I be wearing’ when the audition gets to the bit where the panel say, ‘So, do you have any questions for US?’ – even though many of us secretly yearn to know). So I show them it genuinely doesn’t matter nearly as much as they’ve been led to believe by proving that without them, personally, the play just doesn’t work in the same way.
If I do my job properly I then have a company of young people starting to do work in a way that gives me goose-bumps and I feel safe in the knowledge that they will graft and make the show happen and take everyone along with them… directors, designer, admin, choreographer, technical crew, band and, right at the end of that process, the all-important audience.
Fast forward back to 7pm on Friday 27th July at the City Varieties, as the band struck up and the 70 strong cast of Return To The Forbidden Planet shook, rattled and rolled. If you’ve ever been to this stunning little venue you will know that housing a cast of that size took some mental and physical gymnastics … but we contorted our imaginations and pushed at the sides and we used the stage, the stalls, the slips and the boxes, creating one massive spaceship which contained every person within the building. It was a new way to approach what is a supremely traditional space, and we will continue to look for ways to bend the building to our creative will whilst respecting it’s history and rather wonderful limitations.
We were expecting, when we took this job on, to be stretched in all directions. We all assumed that we would be chasing recruitment, writing letters, organizing times and venues, writing endless risk assessments, buying apples for exhausted teenagers (I’ve never done that, but now I see the merits …)
But no. It quickly became obvious that Rachel Moyise (Learning Manager, CVMH, Leeds Grand Theatre, Hyde Park Picture House) and the rest of the Learning Team were right behind us and, having chosen us to do the job, utterly believed in the work we were developing and quietly set about sorting out the nuts and bolts and oiling the cogs making this youth theatre machine function, leaving us to focus almost exclusively on our artistic input to our 70 strong youth theatre company.
Having such unwavering support meant, inevitably, that not only were we able to do our jobs to the best of abilities, but that we wanted to push that bit further – to put the deepest shine possible on everything we did (think Brasso, but more. Silvo. Still more). We already had a skills-building term behind us so we knew we had a strong cast on our hands … so the rest all fell into place.
I asked Scott Thompson, Leeds based freelance set and prop designer and maker (West Yorkshire Playhouse, Opera North, Northern Ballet, BBC amongst many others) and creator of my Echo Funnel for Saltwell Park, to design and make our set.
Everyone took one look at the set and immediately upped their game yet another notch. This was not what the majority of them were expecting (not everyone apparently follows me on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or flippin’ Flickr, so not everyone saw the pictures …) – this was a youth theatre show and youth theatre shows on a budget rarely have beautiful, professionally made sets and props that awake actual emotive reactions (and anyone who cares to look on YouTube at other versions of Return To The Forbidden Planet will have seen the MDF neon monstrosities which are allowed to pass for Sci Fi sets on a budget).
The technical crew (the wonderful technical crew) took one look at this beautiful construction – a set which looked as if it had been part of the theatre since the beginning of time – and set about bringing it to life as hours dripped away and they rigged uplights, downlights, backlights and stood back um-ing and nodding and smiling as our excitement grew to almost unmanageable proportions.
“Something’s bound to go wrong” someone said.
“I’m not worried at all” I said.
“Neither am I” said Dick.
“Whoop!” said Jamie whilst the band rehearsed in the bar and the bar roof was blown off. The sound was immense and awesome and I started dancing. I didn’t stop until Saturday at 10pm.
The cast arrived to rehearse and were blown away – both by the set (who wouldn’t be?) and the sheer tide of energy and goodwill that flowed from the Directors, the crew, the admin staff and the volunteers. Surely we were all supposed to be stressed and sleep deprived and short tempered and wired on coffee and no food?
“I hate tech rehearsals” one of the cast said.
“Not this one” I said. And kept dancing.
So the young cast grafted and brought the show together in essentially ONE DAY and took everyone along with them as the band – musicians from Hope and Social and The Gary Stewart Band – what a combination! – played and the set came to life like a slightly more attractive cousin of Howl’s Moving Castle, and the volunteers ran around handing out polystyrene monster eyes to the tiniest cast members and painting buckets gold, and the problems were just dealt with as 100 people pulled together and prepared something as close to the perfect ensemble experience as you can get.
So we let the audience in to be faced with the sheer good will, skill, energy and spectacle that we had all created and no one could be in any doubt that those young people were flying and would continue to fly up and beyond many of their expectations.
I don’t care if that sounds like a cliché, because, frankly, there is no better way to put it and the reason I wrote this rather convoluted and rambling piece is to a) underline how young people will confound everyone’s expectations given the tools to do so and b) to take my hat off, in a public arena to every last one of those involved in making this ensemble fly:
To Scott Thompson, the man who designed and built a set that we all fell in love with; to those young people who used every skill we had taught them; to their parents and carers who let them come (and cough up for the pleasure); the band – how LUCKY were we there?; Lawrence Cockrill who spent hours creating animations for a giant backdrop which became three small ones …; the Admin/Learning Team who are second to none I have ever worked with; the City Varieties Technical Team who seemed to love the show as much as it demanded to be loved; to the volunteers, Lindsey (last seen playing a lead role in Red Ladder’s The Promised Land!) and Beth who chaperoned and supported the littlest cast members; the skill of Miranda’s costume maker (Natasha Waite, Goose and the Moose Emporium, Malton) and choreographer (Dawn Holgate) who ran a guest session to pull the finale together; and to my colleagues and co-directors Dick Bonham and Jamie Fletcher who know what good theatre is and pursue it as fervently as I do and always will.
It all starts with the people.
Thank you for listening.
RECRUITING FOR NEW TERM
Our next show will be the Christmas Show at the Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds Grand Theatre.
If you’d like to join the City Varieties Youth Theatre, we are running workshops and a Q & A session with the Directors at the Leeds Grand Theatre on 3rd September.
Please contact the Learning Team to book your place.
rachel.moyise@leedsgrandtheatre.com;
0113 2977043.
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