Youth Theatre – Back in the Room

Our Spring Youth Theatre Programme Is Back

After a tricky year of having to move a majority of our youth theatre and dance classes online, we were delighted to be able to recently launch our Spring Programme in person once again.

Two weeks into term and our groups are working on a Medieval Miracle & Mystery Plays project, inspired by four medieval Cornish play manuscripts, thought to be over 600 years old and which were historically performed to spread Christian ideas and stories of the Bible. The four plays The Cornish Ordinalia, Gwrians an Bys, Bewnans Ke and Bewnans Meriasek, are all written in medieval Cornish, and are hundreds of years old. They are currently held in libraries in Oxford and Wales, but this June will return to Cornwall for the first time in centuries for a very special temporary exhibition at Kresen Kernow, Cornwall’s archive centre.

Each of our Youth Theatre groups are working on their own performance piece, with scripts written by Youth Theatre's Artistic Director Simon Harvey. This term, they will be working with a new team of Directors & Assistant Directors selected after a recent open call, and the performance pieces will be performed on site at Kresen Kernow as part of the celebrations surrounding the manuscripts return. Staged out in the open, and within the traditional format of the Plen an Gwari (medieval amphitheatres found in Cornwall) where actors perform in the round, our young actors have already started working on the skills needed for outdoor performance, including voice projection and emphasising the physicality of their movements to tell a story outside.

Our new Director & Assistant Director teams are: Susan Lay & James D’Arcy (Juniors); Kim Healey & Lewis May (Juniors); Tori Cannell & Hollie Lovelock (Intermediates); Michael Fenner & Shelley Deans (Intermediates); Roisin McCay-Hines & Craig Barr-Green (Seniors); Sam Colborne & Millie Jones (Seniors).