"Because how often do we get to perform in a space like this?"
Drama teacher to their group, standing on the main stage at Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal.
I have just finished my second year of
working as a Connections Director for the National Theatre
Connections programme. On the third and final day of the festival,
you get what can only be described as 'that third day of Glastonbury
feeling', when everything becomes a bit blurry but your guard goes
down so everything is brilliant.
The day after, riding the train home, I
wanted to commit that feeling to paper.
And I also think you lot should pay
more attention to the programme.
NT Connections runs annually. Here's
how it works. Each year, the NT commission 10 new plays to be
performed by young people (aged approx 13-20) for young audiences
(although they often play very well to adult audiences also). The
playwrights each year range from the up-and-coming to the more
established and experienced to writers from other disciplines writing
plays for the first time. This year, for example, I've overseen
plays by Stef Smith, Cush Jumbo, Jamie Brittain, Ayub Khan Din,
Elinor Cook, Ben Ockrent and Katie Douglas (and there's more plays
included in this year's programme that are not in my particular
festival). Some 270-odd youth theatres, schools and other
educational groups join the nationwide Connections programme. They
pick one of the commissioned plays to perform (or, more accurately,
they make 2 or 3 choices and are given 1), and are then given the
rights to perform this play a small number of times over the next 6
months.
The directors all come to London in
September for Directors Weekend – organised into groups according
to the play they will perform, they spend a day with the writer &
a day receiving training in voice/movement etc. They usually begin
rehearsals around November/December time. Around February/March,
they must perform their play in their 'Home Venue'. This can be
their school hall, a church hall, their local theatre, a local
amateur dramatics theatre, anywhere. The audiences are usually made
up of their friends and families – they range in size from 3 to
250. Think about this for a second: a new play written by a
contemporary playwright for a decent sized audience in every corner
of the UK. This is also when the companies are visited for the first
time by a Connections Director. We watch the shows and we meet the
companies in a private after-show Q&A. This bit is great: you
learn their names for the first time, you chat about the funny,
idiosyncratic games they have developed in their process, and you
talk about the play and the performance. The young people will blow
you away with their analysis of a play's themes, characters and how
it all directly affects their lives (for example, a group of 16 year
old girls in Alnwick getting all passionate about feminism, or a 15
year old boy in Camden telling you that, as a direct result of his
experience in a play, he now actively stops his mates from using the
word gay as a derogatory term).
Their creative choices are fascinating:
released from the superego of 'what a lead artist wants you to do',
they often make imaginative and brilliantly crackers staging choices.
Stories about what xxxx company in xxxx town have done with xxxx play in xxxx
year are part of Connections legend. And, on the other side of the
coin, you see empty space stagings that place acting at their heart
in the most brilliant way. These unfussy performances are very often
remarkably powerful. The Connections Directors write an account of
the show, along with 'suggested development notes'. Think of it like
an artistic director going in to see a show in their theatre in
previews. I saw 9 shows this year, and one ends up caring deeply
about every single one of those companies.
In the Spring, each and every show transfers to
a 'Partner Theatre' festival. These festivals take place at
professional theatres around the country: from the Bush, Soho
Theatre, artsdepot or the Tricycle in London to Northern Stage,
Bristol Old Vic, Belfast Lyric and loads of others around the whole
UK. The shows that we have seen at their Home Venue all transfer to a
professional stage. They are given a professional technical
rehearsal, and we make their shows look 100% amazing.
I'm just coming back from the Brewery
Arts Centre in Kendal, where it's been a full-on festival. There's
been two or three shows a night in the main house for the past 3 days
– all of which have gotten in and teched in a single day (hence the
Glastonbury feeling). Last night was a good representation of the
diversity of work: there was a phenomenally expressionistic and
precise staging of Ayub Khan Din's 'The Edelweiss Pirates' by a
theatre school based on the Isle of Man; a gloriously riotous
performance of Stef Smith's 'Remote' by a state secondary school in
Aberconwy where we kept the house lights on throughout, had the
audience on-stage and allowed the characters & chorus to perform
all over the auditorium; and a raw, furious production of Katie
Douglas's 'Follow Follow' by a youth theatre from Dumfries that had
the young audience weeping at its conclusion. Every show over the
weekend has been characterful and unique. You hear a huge diversity
of voices, of accents, of views and ideas, both off and on-stage.
Many groups stayed more than one night to watch other shows to make a
sizeable, youthful and excitable audience; there has been a party
every night where they've eyed each other up and exchanged phone
numbers; and there's been more drama games than I knew existed.
There were so many tears last night when it was all over: even I got
a bit emosh walking away from the theatre.
My point is that this is the theatre
experience that I have enjoyed most throughout the whole year so far.
I love it because it's full of heart: each company perform their one
show to within an inch of their lives. They give it everything. Or
if they don't or can't do this, they don't yet have the craft to hide
their feelings about being on stage. You realise how eccentric the UK is; although our towns have become increasingly
similar to one another in appearance over the past 60 years, you
discover the deeply idiosyncratic souls in these different places
through their youth theatre performance. And it's all beautiful.
Truth flies off the stage and reverberates around the auditorium in every single performance. You couldn't capture the essence of these festivals by writing about concepts or interpretations, you could only say that each show is unpredictable, live, honest and real.
Off-stage, the young people all talk
effortlessly about plays and about life. Some of them want to be
actors or directors or technicians or producers, but more want to be
historians or scientists or teachers or fishermen or journalists or
I-don't-quite-know-yet. At these festivals they all form small,
temporary communities. They show up and they support the shit out of
each other. And they do all of this around art, around theatre,
those things which we're finding ourselves having to justify over and
over again at the moment. Connections is a vastly expensive
programme for the NT. It is an expensive and time-consuming project
for schools and youth theatres to engage in, at a time when young
people are encouraged / instructed to study earlier and earlier for
exams. (I've written a lot about the young people but MY GOD the
teachers and the youth theatre leaders are incredible. That one
teacher in a school who single-handedly keeps drama going. Or the
youth theatre leader who can tell you all about each actor as a
person in enormous detail and will proudly tell you all about what
their previous students are now doing. Or the adult who drives the
minibus back and forth every night, having to listen to the Wicked
soundtrack for the 17th time. These people are
extraordinary.)
All the above challenges can feel enormous. Of course there are frustrations and difficulties in a project as large as this one. And then you look at young people having the time of their lives in
and around a space created for art – you see them feeling and
thinking and laughing and dancing and singing and loving and crying
and playing and just learning how to live well - and you realise that
that is the world in which you want to live. The world that created
this festival right here. If you tried to take their theatre away
from them, you'd have one big fucking fight on your hands. And I'd
be right there, with them.
The NT Festival is in July. All 10
plays of 2015 will be performed over 5 nights in the Dorfman and the
Olivier. They are performed by a selection of groups that represent
the geographical and artistic diversity & excellence of the 2015
Connections Festival. Please come, it'll be a blast. But, if you
want to experience the real thing, come to Kendal next year (or
Newcastle or Plymouth or Eden Court or Salisbury or Finchley or
Warwick or Norwich or Belfast or somewhere else in the UK).
Tomx
With love and respect to: Alnwick
Playhouse Youth Theatre; Bishops High Chester; Brewery Youth Theatre
Kendal; Dumfries Youth Theatre; Headington School Oxford; P&S
Youth Company Isle of Man; Stephen Joseph Youth Theatre Scarborough;
Winstanley College Wigan; Yew Tree Youth Theatre Wakefield; Ysgol
Aberconwy.
KEEP GOING. ALL OF YOU. KEEP GOING.
