BP News

More ex-Youth Theatre at The National Theatre

It’s so nice to hear from past members of the Youth Theatre and I’m happy to say, many do keep in touch, even though they may have left the group over a decade ago! Not all become actors of course but I always hope they keep a love of acting in their lives. On the other hand, some do go on to become professionals.

Claire Rushbrook joined the Youth Theatre in 1984 at the age of 12 (her Mum lied about her age!) and has since gone on to become a very well established actress on stage, on screen and on TV - as I am sure you all know. It was great to get a phone call from her recently about a new play she is in at the Royal National Theatre called Market Boy which is due to open soon. What she wanted to tell me was that she is appearing with another Youth theatre member, Craig Vye, who left RADA last year. You might remember Craig as a longstanding lead actor with the group in plays like Mother Courage, Beautiful Thing and Runaways. Craig has always been a very physical performer and Market Boy is a very physical play about a working class teenager in Thatcher’s Britain who moves from barrow boy to entrepreneur, gaining money and power but losing his humanity en route.

So two actors from the group in one production at the RNT... Sounds great! Do try and grab tickets and I’m sure Claire and Craig would love to chat to you briefly after the show – although they warn me it finishes a bit late.

Craig Vye with Peter England , Nerys Martin and Natalie Gordon in Big Spirit's 1998/99 production of Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey which we also took to the Edinburgh Fringe. Craig who played Ste in our version, went on to take the other role of Jamie in the Nottingham Playhouse production in 2001.