Youth Theatre Showcase (2018)
About the show
This year Travelling Light's older Youth Theatre groups worked with a team of professional artists to create their showcase performances:
The 11-13s were interested in the different characters young people find within themselves as they grow up. The Marvellous Imaginarium of Invisible Outcasts was a vaudevillian extravaganza set in the mind of a child. Different acts competed for the audience’s attention while the nameless child tried to keep everyone in balance.
The 14-19s show explored themes of friendship and loss. This Way Up followed workers trapped in a underworld bureaucracy where souls are filed, packaged and stored away. Here any act of rebellion leads to workers being ‘demapped’ where all personality and sense of self is lost, and all memory of them wiped from the worlds above.
The Youth Theatre pitched ideas for the shows to the professional panel in the autumn, before devising and developing the shows in Youth Theatre workshops and holiday research and development days. While all our youth theatre project are youth led, this year was special because the youth theatre had the resources to collaborate with local artists to tell the stories they wanted to tell. The 33 Youth theatre members worked with a professional composer, dramaturg, movement director, deisgner and director to develop their thoughts and feelings about growing up into two sold out performances at the atmospheric professional venue: The Loco Klub.
The project was made possible by support from the Youth Investment Fund, which is funded jointly by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Big Lottery Fund.
To find out more about the project and its impact, read Travelling Light's article The Youth Theatre Showcase: An Investment in Creativity.
Audience Responses:
'Challenging and exciting theatre' with a 'high standard of performance and staging'
'Inspiring and thought provoking. Captivating.'
'I felt I was hearing messages about what it is like to be growing up at this moment in time'