Audition for YARD Young Actors Company!

Are you creative, interested in Theatre & Performance and aged between 15 to 25 yrs… then why not come and audition for Yard Young Actors Company (YYAC)!

YYAC are currently looking for young people with a passion for theatre. If you are creative, assertive and interested in a future career within the arts, then Yard Young Actors Company is for you!

Yard Young Actors was founded in August 2008 and since then the company have gone from strength to strength, performing in venues around the country. Last year YYAC collaborated with Nottingham Playhouse and performed the Gaza Monologues as part of NEAT 2012. This year the company beat off fierce competition and reached international success by securing one of three UK places in the International young people’s theatre festival, Contacting the World devised and managed by Contact, Manchester. Six companies, including YYAC, will take part in Contacting the World festival, 9 – 15 July 2012.

We are currently looking for new members to be part of the next phase of the companies journey, if you think you have what it takes come along to our audition day on Wednesday 29 August, 11am – 1pm.

The day will consist of workshop style audition exploring YYAC’s unique style of theatre making, each auditionee will be asked to prepare a short contemporary speech no longer than two minutes long. Please come wearing comfortable clothing and bring a bottle of water.

Please contact Rachael@nae.org.uk or call 0115 924 8630 for further information and to book.

For further information on YARD visit:
www.facebook.com/YardProjects
Follow us on @YouthYard

For further information on Contacting the World visit:
www.contactmcr.com/

For further information on First Floor visit:
www.first-floor.info/theatre-makers/
www.facebook.com/FirstFloorTheatre
Follow us on @FFNottingham

Check trailer for Contacting The World 2012!

Help YARD get to Contacting The World

Visit our fundraising page to help get us to Manchester this July – every little helps and we are truly grateful!

Kyle in Manchester and Moradokmai at YARD

Day 2 CTW March Meet

So last night there was an openmic night at Contact after a few Mc’s and singers performed. However the biggest response of the night was from our very own CTW Crew! Gai had written a poem that day in Thai and Tan asked me to translate it! K. I did my best and they took to the stage, Tan read the translation whilst Gai played the Flute, they thenswapped over, Gai reading the original poem in Thai. After the poem Gai then broke out into a rap in the style of the MC’s from earlier in the evening…..classic!

So today was a more formal day,meeting a lot of people and doing some provisional planning for festival week.We met Frilly the company evaluating the festival, the Tech Team, Marketing Team and the folks in the seat of power as far as us eating festival week!

We got a quick blogging lesson,learning how to blog properly on the Contact website, so yes, I am now officiallya blogger!

We had an hour & halfworkshop with Montse where we began to prepare for the workshops with theschools tomorrow. Then after dinner we got to chill for an hour or so before wegot to watch a dress rehearsal of a performance of Wizard in Contacts Space 2.

Overall it’s been a good day,all the reps are familiar with each other now so we are all getting alongreally well with each other and having some good times which I’m sure is only abrief snippet of how much fun the actual week is going to be!

Day 2 CTW Manchester………DONE!

Hello Therrrreee!!

Today was our third and final day of the March meet and what a busy day! Had an early start as Tan & Gaiinvited all the rep’s to their highly superior apartment, having a 2ndfloor, for breakfast! So myself, Danielle from Trinidad & Tobago’s Wordsmiths’group and Montse started our day with a Thai breakfast of pork steak, salad, anolive omelette and something with some sort of finely slice meat withmushrooms! OH! And I had a Kiwi yogurt for afters . Tan also wanted to startcreating a film this morning also which produced some joke moments!

When getting to Contact we had acouple of hours to go over our workshop plans and what was going to be happening when the schools arrived before breaking for a speedy lunch.

After lunch we had a photo shoot with the festival photographer, which was awkward for me because I hate photos lol.

The schools arrived earlier than expected so we got ourselves into the space and prepared for the sound of school children…. Baba introduced each school to their ‘Twins’ and each was followed by a intro video about the group, except for Wordsmiths who performed via telepresence! With their rep performing live! After more photos with theschools we broke off to begin workshops. These where really good and the kids really responded well and seemed to really enjoy learning from their ‘Twins’.

After the schools left we thenhad no time to rest as we needed to tech and prepare for our preview eveningwhere we had to perform a small snippet of performance. This was quite excitingbecause it just brought it all to life. The evening went as follows; CYACperformed a 5min piece as the hosting company, Wordsmiths performed anothertelepresence performance, Tan & Gai performed a piece of music with themplaying their flutes live on stage, straight after that I went on and performeda piece of spoken word written by our very own Mia Johnson which was backed byour Thai Twin playing the flute to the poem which worked AMAZINGLY well! Really showing the integration of the twinning, yeah that’s right we rocked it! Then there was another telepresence with a dancer and bass player/beat boxer in NewYork, Tan & Gai playing the flutes live, the rep from Nigeria’s CrowneTroop dancing live and also a dancer from Manchester’s Boundless which createdso many interesting images it was great! Then to bring the evening to an endBoundless rained it in for us.

After a huge Turkish buffet at a really nice restaurant and trying to meet all the others in the Manchester groups that brings our last day to an end

Bringing Thailand to Nottingham!

So! After a saddening little farewell meeting of the reps in Tan & Gai’s room this morning, we had saidour goodbyes and Me Tan & Gai set sail for Nottingham, or, set rail Ishould say. We got to Nottingham in the afternoon and en route to the hotel Idecided to take the boys to meet the wondrous Mia at her place of work so theycould put a face to the poem.

After checking them in I letthem settle for a few hours and I returned to my humble abode. I met back upwith them a few hours later and took them on a small tour of the city centre.Gai had already said he wanted to meet Robin Hood as he wants to be one of the Merry Men lol, so I made sure we got to go to the castle. We got to go in acouple of art galleries and luckily there was a global market in the MarketSquare so that was nice to go around, we all decided to try something new soTan and me had Kangaroo Burgers for the first time and Gai had an Ostrich Burger for the first time. Yes that’s right we ate Skippy! He tastes pretty darn good too!

Proving that Nottingham is a lotsmaller than Manchester, we saw around half of YARD in town! This was good in away because the guys could meet before the meal.

7pm was the time we introducedTan & Gai to one of the most crucial parts of the culture of YARD…….Nandos! We all met in Nandos and were tightly packed into a cubicleto chow down on the holiness that is peri peri chicken. We devoured those carcass’with great force, said farewell to Zara as she departed for Paris and welcomed our Twin’s to the neighbourhood.

Kyle goes to Contact in Manchester…

Hi guys!
Thought I’d do a lil blog for this lil visit. Day 1 is nearly coming to an end, aching l after the balletboyz workshop last night and a very energetic workshop with montse this morning! Overall it has been a good day! I have met and been with all the representatives with all the companies and they are all really kool. Tan and Gai are here and looking forward to meeting you all, Gai has asked that he meet Robin Hood lol.

I met Baba the artistic director of contact and he seems very eager to see what we are coming up with (no pressure). Everyone here is gearing to go and i can’t say it enough we really need to step it up and slick it up! Just being here makes it a LOT more real for me and it’s really gearing me up in terms of excitement and inspiration!!

Montse Gili from CTW2012 visits YARD

21/02/12
Today our session was run by Montse.
We began by showing her our ‘ritual’ which I think could be switched up slightly, I think we should maybe focus on exercises that we don’t do enough of, I enjoyed the breathing exercises plenty of diaphragm control, but I reckon we could do something more ‘up tempo’ break a sweat

Anyways Monste then sat us in a circle and  introduced herself, telling us what she’s been doing and what she expects from us as a company, and how we shouldn’t rely on our Rach, which is true were all young adults, and we are more than capable of gathering ideas etc. saying that though Wednesday was very productive so high five my people. I believe Monste thought that we were very serious and not really an outspoken group however I suppose she doesn’t know the nature of our group and that we were just respecting her.

We did several focus exercise which consisted of walking around the space in neutral and having eye contact with people you pass by, when we were told to stop by Monste we would have to pick a pose and hold it making sure we were filling the space as a col

lective. We kind of sucked at this more so Rachel Pixie LOL, however with several attempts we did get better, I think that’s a exercise we could use during the ritual maybe? With a little music.

We then went onto another focus game where Monste would give us four separate instructions and we had to perform the opposite, this was a good game for our group sometimes we rush things and loose concentration so this helps also you get slightly competitive which is always good… oh yes I won the first round didn’t I , we also  played a more “calming” focus game were we would have to move as a group, starting from 1 person and gradually 4 people would have to move at a time, we did OK at this but I still think our focus isn’t always brilliant.

We then moved onto “narrating”, and taking children’s stories and creating them using a few actors and 1 person playing a narrator, it was interesting to see how everyone works together, and how we could use narration in our piece whether it be 1 person telling the story and more than 1 person narrating, there are so many ways we could use narration. At some points the narrator controlled what the actors did but then the actors would take control and the narrator would then have to say what was happening.

We finally split into two groups and picked one item that Moradokmai had sent us, and we had to create a journey for the object, a back story, and use narration to tell the story, again we used different ways of narrating, experimenting is the best way when creating and Monste’s exercises did help with the creative flow that happened on Wednesday, Monste ended by giving us our next mission!

Loves Mia

YARD visit Moradokmai in Thailand

As part of Contacting The World 2012, one lucky yardie was chosen to take up the journey of a lifetime to Thailand to visit the Moradokmai Theatre group and it was certainly a trip that I won’t forget any time soon!
Our journey there was long! And after our two flights and meeting Monste, Contacting The World artist facilitator and soon to be christened ‘volcano head’ by me, our 13 hour journey was over and we landed on Thai ground! We were eager to see the city, but instead had to see the sights of the back of fellow travellers heads in a 3 hour queue to get through passport control!
When we finally  got to the other side we met Tan and headed to our hotel to meet Pobchan and her son and headed out for food straight away. We had a lovely dinner serenaded by an excellent famous old Thai singer, and very nearly tried the snake on the menu… but didn’t! On our second day in Bangkok we travelled to the camp of Moradokmai in Patumthani where the floods had hit, we saw the destruction and it’s amazing that these people are still going strong despite what happened to their home! We then went for a bit of sight-seeing,  jumped in a tuc tuc and headed off to the grand royal palace to see the beautiful views!
After a lovely time with Pobchan and Tan in Bangkok on our third day it was time to get on the plane again, this time to go to the mountains! We arrived and were greeted by a smiling Kong, O and Kong’s little boy and headed off on our three hour drive to camp! Pulling up to the camp I realised just how different this stay would be for me and camping around the mountains with no electricity (NO FACEBOOK!) and living very simply shocked and slightly scared me! However over the next couple of days I came to love it, the people at Moradokmai were so committed and there was always an energy and buzz in the camp, from 5 am when the drums were beating and everyone was awoken for morning ritual till evenings when play rehearsals and music was still being played. After one day in camp we visited Chiang Khan, where the group go regularly to play and visit, we stayed in a lovely hotel right on the river and I loved watching everyone perform and even having a little dance in the street alongside them! We also went with one of the groups to take the show to different schools to perform, and it was clear the kids loved it! Having just settled into the lifestyle of Moradokmai and spending 6 days waking up for morning ritual taking part in workshops , attempting to play the violin, washing outside, going on treks to the mountains to camp and climbing through waterfalls, it was sadly time to go, and we headed of back to Bangkok.
When we arrived in Bangkok we had around 6 hours to spare and headed for some last minute sightseeing,  hopping on the skytrain and finding ourselves in a very big shopping mall! We even found a Nandos and on our last meal in Thailand sadly was chicken and chips tut tut! We arrived home safe and sound despite the shame of walking through the airports in flip flops and socks having not worn appropriate foot attire for the -7 conditions of Amsterdam! All in all it was an amazing trip and have taken a lot from the way the  Moradokmai live and work doing the thing they love – performing! And I would like to say a massive thank you to Contacting the World, Yard, New Art Exchange and of course Moradokmai looking after us – can’t wait to continue working with you and to see you all again in Manchester!

Rachel

Last week at YARD…

So… Tuesday 31st January 2012… Yard session. Great! Starting off with the game were we have to keep the ball off the ground.Our high score was 22, not too bad. In the next game we had to really concentrate. Starting by saying names then throwing the ball then swapping places all at the same time. Note I was terrible at this. after the game we had to think of something that had inspired us during the week, we came up wit:Family, Chocolate, Joshua’s DREAM- Dance Runs Everything Around Me, cycling and some other that I’ve forgotten but I sure they were very good. After this we played clear the space. Where Alison told us a movement and we had to do it e.g. fold, mirror and favourites. Following this we carried on with the same activity we were doing last week, Chair duets and we then added dialogue all using very different techniques for example telling a story, acting out a scene or showing different opinions on an event. So on the whole… good session

Mission 3… How do we make theatre?

Heyheyhey
This week we’ve explored and recapped on previous works and the ways in which we created them.
We aim to use a variety of ideas from a range of subjects that are close and inspirational to us. This includes the riots which happened and also the exhibitions in the gallery.
We did some improvisation tasks to get our brains working and then worked in small groups and duos to create chair duets. This consists of sitting side by side next to your partner and working out a phrase by moving each others body parts into different positions. Then to make it more challenging we were given a scenario to act out whilst doing the phrase and in turn performed back to the rest of the group.
We’ve had a lot of joke times over the past couple years that i’ve been a member and I know they’ll be plenty more to come.
Zalika

Our box opened in Thailand!