BP News

Youth Theatre Corner

I really enjoyed the Youth Theatre show, Oedipus & Antigone [so did I, it was brilliant! JA] – Rob, Katie and Jimi did a great job and they enabled the 30 members of the cast to really shine in a powerful and earthy production of a very difficult piece. The fact that the cast evidently enjoyed something so remote from their lives so much is a testament to the strong vision and inspiration of the 3 directors (stage, movement and percussion) working together. I have taken some photos of the large set pieces in the show and they look stunning so I’ll put a display together soon.

Oedipus and Antigone was the culmination of a series of workshops (within rehearsals) on Classical Acting. The next modules for the Youth Theatre are on New Acting and Acting for Camera. What is ‘new acting’ you might ask? It reflects the current move to using post-modern theories to inform actor training. It’s not as complicated as it sounds but it is a change that’s occurring and an exciting one too. So it’s a slow goodbye to Stanislavski and his emphasis on ‘an actor’s personal journey to discover the character’ and more about the moment-to-moment relationship between actors onstage. Voice and movement skills are still important of course but improvisational skills are given greater emphasis, as are the relationships between the actors themselves. The Youth Theatre seemed to love it all and spontaneously cheered at the end of the first workshop! Wow! Perhaps they were pleased it had ended… The Acting for Camera workshops will be run by two professional actors and teachers so that will be fascinating for them too. They also get to make a short film. Hey, they get a lot for their £130 a year, don’t they?