Play In A Day!

Play In A Day! One of the hardest things to do; having a group of young people together for just eight hours to then put on a thirty minute show… the play had to be devised and created in just this short period of time!

So after a little warm up, with the usual games.. ZIP ZAP BOING... we got to work!

The idea I had for the show was to show the audience every aspect of theatre, so having small groups of people to show for example the techies, or the backstage nerves and we even had the divas! They all had one thing in common, they NEEDED the stage manager Dave!

After Dave being the only one not to have shown up but needed for everything... panic broke out.

But The Show Must Go On!

The performance was shown to family and friends of the cast, who were very impressed by slickness of the performance!

I would like to say a MASSIVE well done to everyone! This being my first project I felt so proud, I also want to say a HUGE thank you to Emma and Scott for helping produce and Rory for music and tech and his also debut of acting with FYT! And again for everyone who came to see it, got involved and helped make it a great show!

Charli!

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Theatrical Structure

Producer:
Leaps Tall Buildings In A Single Bound
Is More Powerful Than A Locomotive
Is Faster Than A Speeding Bullet
Walks On Water
Gives Policy To God

Director:
Leaps Short Buildings In A Single Bound
Is More Powerful Than A Switch Engine
Is Just As Fast As A Speeding Bullet
Walks On Water If The Sea Is Calm
Talks With God

Playwright:
Leaps Short Buildings With A Running Start
Is Almost As Powerful As A Switch Engine
Is Faster Than A Speeding BB
Swims Well
Is Occasionally Addressed By God

Actor:
Makes High Marks On The Wall When Trying To Leap Buildings
Is Run Over By Locomotives
Can Sometimes Handle A Gun Without Inflicting Self-Injury
Dog Paddles
Talks To Animals

Band:
Runs Into Buildings
Recognizes Locomotives Two Out Of Three Times
Is Not Issued Ammunition
Can Stay Afloat With A Life Preserver
Talks To Walls

Chorus:
Falls Over Doorsteps When Trying To Enter Buildings
Says, Look At The Choo-Choo!
Wets Self With A Water Pistol
Plays In Mud Puddles
Mumbles To Self

Stage Manager:
Lifts Buildings And Walks Under Them
Kicks Locomotives Off The Track
Catches Speeding Bullets In Teeth And Eats Them
Freezes Water With A Single Glance
Is GOD

Dance Moves

Come along for a great evening of entertainment from this group of talented young dancers!

Monday 19th July · 19:30 - 21:30
Franklin College, Grimsby

FYT Dance group has been working all term on a selection of pieces from classical to hip hop, using skills they learnt at the London dance festival Move It which they attended in March under... the direction of Alison Traill.

No Ticket prices - Just donations on the door!

Hope to see you all there, please support our young people!

Festival Trips

Caistor Group Trip to RYTF
During the final weekend of January 2010, members of our Caistor Drama group travelled to Wellingborough to take part in the Regional Youth Theatre Festival at the Castle Arts Centre. Youth members attended some brilliant workshops led by professional theatre directors including Stage Fighting, classical theatre and improvisation skills. They also watched a number of performances by other regional youth theatre’s which have given them inspiration and confidence in their own work! Glad that everyone had a good time and we hope to go again next year!

‘Move It’ Dance Festival in London
Our young dancers had a brilliant time at the Move It Dance Festival in London in March. They took part in dance workshops in Jazz, Streetdance, Hip Hop and much more and learnt loads of new skills. They met Louis Spence from the Pineapple Dance Studios documentary and watched performances by winners from ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. The group stayed in a youth hostel near Hyde Park and attended the Olympia Festival for 2 hectic days.

Jan - March 2010

Play in a Week – Our New World!
This term’s Play in a Week project was hosted kindly by Caistor Yarborough School and took place over just 4 days! The cast worked together to create a brand new show based around the idea of having to leave Earth in search for a new home. The young actors learnt about a variety of techniques from dance and drama to monologue, still image, puppetry, art and much much more.
They created the whole thing from scratch and did a wonderful job of taking the audience on their journey into a world of spaceships, robots and alien characters! The project took place in February half term, 2010.

‘Young Talent 2010’Our brand new Talent Comp returned for it’s second year, back by popular demand!
Singers, Dancers, Actors and Musicians took to the stage to impress our judges and the audience!
Sonia Chauhan & Charlotte Adams scooped the trophy for the Audience Choice award while Jessica Allan was awarded the special recognition award after her solo song. The Judges Trophy for first place went to young singer Amy Garnett who performed ‘I’m Telling You’.
We are proud of our youth members for taking part, keeping in the spirit of the competition and focusing on enjoying the chance to perform!
Look out for the chance to enter in next years comp!

‘Bits n Pieces’To celebrate the end of the term, our Cleethorpes drama group hosted an information & social evening at their new venue – Trin Youth Centre, Cleethorpes!
The evening welcomed all FYT members as well as parents, family, friends etc to find out about FYT and what was coming up in the run up to summer! As well as grabbing a drink at the bar, playing pool or air hockey and competing on the Nintendo Wii, the audience were also treated to some short performances, Open Mic style by any youth member who wanted to get up and perform any bits n pieces!
The evening was a great success and also served as a bit of a fundraiser for the youth theatre. No ticket prices were charged, just donations requested during the event.

Dance Hub Showcase
Just a quick shout out to Alison Traill and the dance group at FYT who worked so hard throughout January to put a piece of contemporary dance theatre together for the Youth Dance Hub Showcase at the Grimsby Auditorium on 3rd March. The group were praised in the local paper – ‘No performers were more impressive than the Fusion Youth Theatre Members … with some dramatic poses and spectacular turns.’ Congratulations to all involved!

A busy and successful 2009

FYT wave goodbye to a busy and successful 2009!

2009 was a very busy and exciting year for members of Fusion Youth Theatre. The group visited Japan for two weeks over the Easter break where they learnt about Noh Theatre & Taiko Drumming, had their very first talent competition – Young Talent 2009 and put on numerous productions through which they learnt about creating performances, the rehearsal process and backstage work. The senior drama group went on tour to Boston, Scunthorpe, Cleethorpes, Spilsby and Doncaster with their production of ‘Chomp – A Zombie Musical’ which was written for them by professional playwright, Andy Evans. They then took Chomp to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that summer and performed as part of the largest arts festival in the world!

That summer the group worked at Franklin College to create a brand new piece of theatre based on the story of the Monkey King, the performance went on to win first place at the Skegness Youth Drama Festival in October!
New drama groups were set up in Cleethorpes & Caistor while the Grimsby Dance & Drama sessions continued to thrive and get stronger. New partnerships were formed with Franklin College and Caistor Yarborough School.
The year ended with a production of The Snow Queen in Cleethorpes.

The Golem

The Golem – A Report!

The Golem was an additional project run by FYT with 6 senior members of the group, the piece was written by Andy Evans and was based on the Jewish tale of the Golem of Prague, where a Rabbi creates a giant clay man to protect his people from King Rudolf II who has been spreading false information to Christians that the Jews have been kidnapping their children!

Charlotte Parkin, Abbi Smith, Jade Smith, Jasmine Palmer, Aidan Savage and Harry Kelly all worked hard in between regular weekly sessions to put this piece together which required each actor to portray many different characters on stage.

The piece premièred at the Skegness Youth Drama Festival in October and adjudicator Russell Whitley thought the performances were excellent. The piece suffered somewhat technically at the festival with us having a very limited rehearsal time but all 4 actresses were nominated for Best Actress, something that is usually unheard of at the festival! The performers were also described by Mr Whitely as ‘incredibly versatile’ an incredible compliment to any young actor!

When the show came to the Lindsey School in Cleethorpes, it had been polished and re-rehearsed to iron out all the creases we saw at the festival. The cast gave an exceptional performance which was met with a standing ovation at the end, many parents thought it was one of the best productions created by FYT to date! Thanks to all involved! The show was part of the areas Lit.Com Festival.

Play in a Week – MY STORY!

MY STORY!This production was very successful in many aspects, firstly a lot, if not most, of the children involved have never met each other or us before that week, and it was great to see them all working together to produce a good piece of theatre in just a short space of time. From FYT’s viewpoint it was great to work with some new children from around the local area & with the Arts Development team on such an important project like the Lit.Com festival.

The show, based on stories by Jacqueline Wilson, looked amazing with the bright neon pieces of costume set against the black of the stage and the black clothes the kids wore. We all enjoyed working with the participants, and we had a really good time. A special mention must be said to the older members of our youth theatre that took time out from their holiday to come and help with the production - thank you Charli and Jasmine! The feedback from the show was fantastic, ‘very impressive’, ‘one of the best things we have seen by young people’, ‘incredibly professional looking’. Another special thank you must be said to the staff of the Lindsey School, for helping us through the week. And lastly a big thank you to all the participants involved in the week, for giving their full commitment to the project every day. - Scott Middleton

The Monkey King

FYT win 1st PLACE at the Skegness Youth Drama Festival!

For 2 weeks in August, local young people created a brand new piece of theatre based on the famous Chinese story of The Monkey King! Reviewed as ‘Visually Stunning’ by the Grimsby Evening Telegraph, the play was revived and toured to the Skegness Youth Drama Festival in October 2009. We competed against 10 other youth theatres that weekend, adjudicator Russell Whitely described our piece as ‘Outstanding’ and ‘Head & shoulders above the rest!’. Lo and behold, FYT were announced the winners of the festival, with special mentions for Abbi Smith who played Monkey and Sancha King who played Master Subhodi. He was also impressed by the teamwork and discipline of the whole cast! Congratulations to all involved!

“the cast of The Monkey King sat in the audience and watched the first show after that we had to go get ready for our play because we were on third, so we waited backstage and did warm-ups, then it was finally time for us to perform and it went AMAZING everyone was so professional and it was obvious that the judge was excited.” Gracie Mason.


Funded by Grassroots Grant, VANEL.

An Overview of ‘CHOMP’

The Disease Spread All Over the UK!

An Overview of ‘CHOMP’ on tour By Charlotte Parkin

After a gruelling, and groaning, six months of rehearsals for Chomp! A Zombie Musical written by Andy Evans, it was time to hit the ground for a week tour around the local area. With a kick start off at Lindsey School in Cleethorpes, scaring and singing along to the addictive songs the cast left the audience amazed at the choreography of the dances, the level of acting shown and the enjoyment of the actors!

For me I love performing to the home crowd, it’s the people you have to impress most, show your mum what her driving to rehearsals every week has helped towards, what it’s ended up being! Some of the comments from the audience pushed everyone’s spirits up to high, and reared everyone for a week of tiring, some might even say deadly, performances, but nevertheless I don’t think anyone would have changed it for anything!

Jade Smith, 16, dancing zombie, even claimed it ‘The best experience EVER!’ The favoured show was at Doncaster Little Theatre, even though realising, as we arrived, there would have to be a few major changes to our rehearsed show because of different staging, everyone took it in their stride making it the strongest performance of the week! With performances also taking part in Spilsby, Boston and Scunthorpe; it really was a hectic!


There were 25 kids on stage, but they weren’t the only ones to contribute and also enjoy it! Back stage and the ‘techies’ helped make each show. Tim Peacock, 18, sound technician: ‘Awesome fun and a great experience. It was good to be involved in a new piece of writing in such a way.’

After tying up the tour in Scunthorpe, you could see the anxiety in peoples’ faces; we were off to Edinburgh to perform in the Fringe, the largest arts festival in the WORLD! We all knew what it meant, what sort of opportunity this was for us, aged between 13 and 18! So we worked our socks of in the next few rehearsals cutting and modifying the musical to being the best we all could make it!

So a week later, we gather our tents sleeping bags and many a bag of food too! Jumped on a minibus for a long drive, the good end of six hours! When we arrived the sun was shining, we set up at camp, then got ready to tackle The Royal Mile. All pulling together the team acted scenes out in the middle of crowds of people; trying to chase, and munch upon fellow citizens, just the way to promote a Zombie Musical wouldn’t you say?

After pulling in a large audience, nearly sold out on both nights, we all piled backstage to prepare with 5 minutes to get in and set up and 5 minutes to get out after the show. I looked around in the dressing room, seeing all these familiar faces, and before we even went on stage, I was so proud. We’d made it here and we were going to give it our best. And that’s what we did! The performances didn’t run as smoothly as hoped, but the recoveries from the cast made it barely noticeable, singing a Capella in front of 150 people, really does show your professionalism and gained us a standing ovation! So with our two performances over, we had time to enjoy the Fringe.

Taylor Thow, 18, realised after watching shows at the festival ‘As long as you are involved in cutting edge, interesting and different drama that's all that matters.’

As a whole I think I can claim, ‘Chomp!’ really was the highlight to 2009 for everyone involved. A big thank you for all that helped towards the show, including, workshop leaders, backstage, technicians, cast and the people that came to see it!

Chomp – A Zombie Musical was written by Andy Evans, with original music by Jack Pudsey and funded by the Clore Duffield Performing Arts Award.

Japan – A Cultural Experience with FYT

When they said ‘Japan will seem like a world away,’ they were not wrong. It’s a place full of culture and art, but a culture and art so far removed from my own that I felt honoured to be allowed even the tiniest glimpse of it on my recent trip with Fusion Youth Theatre.

The first thing that struck me about Japan was how immediately at home I felt, very strange considering it felt a world away from everything I am accustomed to, but the people there welcomed us with open arms. They are very proud to be Japanese and have every right to be. From their castles, to their parks, to the food and the art, everything seemed so rich and vibrant. But what is most striking about this culture is its ability to coexist with all that is modern. It was not uncommon to see two friends, one in jeans the other in a full traditional kimono, walking side by side down a busy shopping street. Or people playing drums for their own amusement in the park. Or a glorious castle set against the back drop of a city skyscraper. Traditional buildings and markets are found nestled amongst everything high tech and futuristic we have come to expect of Japanese society today.

Our group travelled to many places and experienced many things. A highlight for me was the Taiko drumming workshop. The drums, which are akin to a barrel with skins on either end, were used in feudal Japan to motivate troops, but for us it felt more like a full, hard work out. There was a discipline to be learned too and we soon learned that playing the Taiko drums was more like taking part in a martial arts class. It was incredibly fulfilling though, hearing the deafening thump of the drum in time with your team mates was a wonderful sound and something we would not get to experience easily at home.

I think the most poignant and memorable part of our trip for a lot of the younger members of the group was our visit to Hiroshima. What happened there all those years ago is a distant memory for most, and not even a conscious thought for others. But I believe the peace memorial park, in its remembrance of all that died that day, is a far better way of honouring the dead than moving on and forgetting. Our day in Hiroshima taught the group more in a few hours than any school course ever could, and I believe the youngsters felt that too, reflecting it in their performances during our later workshops. I believe they took memories of that day, and most probably the entire trip, home with them and I can only hope it did one simple thing; Made them think. Made them think about the future, about their actions and about their consequences. Made them think about who they are, where they are and where they are going. Quite a lot from one trip to Japan, but it was a trip so rich in experience I think it impossible to have come home without at least a pull on the heart.
http://fytjapan.blogspot.com/

By Gemma Quickfall.