Lights, Camera, Action!

Warning: Extreme amounts of praise and electronic applause ahead!

At the Youth Theatre this week, our Senior group had their sharing. Families and Friends were invited to come and watch their work which they have been working extremely hard on for the past few weeks. And what a night it was!

The session was filled with a wonderful script, lighting and directing by 3 very talented members, and performed with the highest of standards by a wonderful cast of senior members. A comedic section of improvisation that opened up the floor between the actor and the audience, and had the whole room stunned with the level of improvising these members could do on the spot. And a wonderfully choreographed physical theatre piece that transported their audience behind the four walls of family life, and through the use of movement, explored the lives of 6 characters, who showed struggles families can approach sometimes.

I know I speak on behalf of myself, Rachel and Sophie by saying we can not congratulate the Senior group enough for the work they have created, we are very very proud of you and you should all be so pleased with the pieces of work you created! You are all such a talented and lovely bunch of young adults, an absolute pleasure to work with each week! – Paige

What a week!

We have had such an exciting and over whelming week at Growtheatre! Our two youngest groups have had a wonderful time outside in the woods this week! Not only did we manage to be explorers creating in the woods, but we also welcomed loads of new friends to our session and it was very lovely to be able to bring a friend to share our fun theatre activities!

We are working from a wonderful and beautifully illustrated book called ‘The Lost Words’, and is a book that has been created to save words that are being taken out from the Children’s Dictionary.

We have been taking inspiration from one of the wonderful poems, Magpie, and exploring how we can bring the words off the paper and bring them to life through the use of freeze frames, physical theatre, speech and sound! Both groups have worked fantastically and it has been brilliant to be able to develop their ideas whilst using nature and being in the woods!

Seniors

7/2/19
This week we worked more on our group projects (I’m in the physical theatre group), after playing some games. 
Paige introduced us to a new game which was fun. One person begins a mime to set the scene and then someone else comes in, establishes a relationship, and then creates a problem. Then someone else comes in a fixes it. Repeat!! Each week we have learnt a new exercise for improvisation and I’ve really enjoyed it. 

Another game we played is called Guess The Leader, where someone is leading actions and the person in the middle has to guess who. Rachel encouraged those of us in the physical theatre group to have a go at leading. It’s hard to think of lots of movements but it’s definitely good practice!

Then we moved on to group work. On Wednesday evening I watched a school show involving lots of physical theatre so I felt inspired! We started devising our first scene, thinking how we could include little physical bits. I think it turned out really well! My favourite bit so far is the main character is getting increasingly stressed so we are all banging on the table to make it really unbearable and then we stop at the exact moment she puts her headphones in. It works so well! I’m really proud of our group this week and I hope it goes this well in other weeks too. 
– Maya, Senior Youth Theatre Member

Improvising with The Intermediates

Improvisation? Hard? Not for our Intermediate group who had a fantastic evening exploring techniques and exciting exercises that developed their skills as performers! The group has worked so well as a team this week, especially when they have been working on exercises that they create on the spot! They were so accepting of each others ideas and had so much fun thinking of new and imaginative characters! The group took us to a party with a werewolf, a car ride with a vampire and managed to beat a personal record in one of their favourite games!

I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!

We have had such a fun week at the Youth Theatre! Our evening started with an adventure to meet the Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf with our Junior Group, recreating the scene where The Big Bad Wolf knocks on the door of Three Little Pigs house made of bricks! The Junior group learnt all about Narration and had so much fun with adding narration and freeze frames into their scenes! Each week they continue to amaze us with their enthusiasm and energy, always wanting to learn more!

25/01/2019

What an evening with the Youth Theatre! With the Juniors, we worked really hard as a group to develop our approaches to Physical Theatre and we did this by looking at classical fairy-tales! We looked at a certain moment from these stories and found a way to dramatise the story by using physical theatre and shapes!

The Intermediates had so much fun tonight ‘devising with props’! We got to look at different props and determine a different way of using them! We had all sorts of fun and creative objects, my personal favourite was a scarf that was really a snake! The groups worked fantastically together creating their own scenes, it was wonderful to see such bonding and listening to each others ideas to make sure everyone had an equal role to play!

Creative juices were flowing tonight with our Senior group! We had fun playing improvising activities, especially with the props, and seeing what imaginative ideas we could come up with! Then the group put their imaginative thinking caps on to plan their final pieces based around Script work, improvising, lighting, film, physical theatre and more! We are very much excited to see what the next few coming weeks bring!

~ Paige 

17/01/2019

We had a fantastic session at the Youth Theatre last night, all three groups were brilliant! From using The Three Little Pigs in the Junior session and working on our freeze frames, crashing into a mystical land looking at role play with a mischievous elf with the Intermediates, and exploring some exciting and challenging options with the Seniors such as script work, physical theatre, stage combat AND improvisation – it was a fun filled and wonderful evening in the woods!

Here is a picture of the Junior session having fun with their freeze frames as The Three Little Pigs Tale! OINK!

– Paige

An Even Better Arbourthorne

The Real Junk Food Project Market Stall!

An Even Better Arbourthorne has had their first market stall today with The Real Junk Food Project in Sheffield and it was a fantastic success! The stall was run by a group of Year 5 children from Arbourthorne Community Primary School whom helped sell a variety of fruit, vegetables, bread and canned goods to the Arbourthorne Community, all for a £1.00 a bag! 

An Even Better Arbourthorne

Growtheatre has been working on a brand new and exciting initiative recently and we would like to share all the brilliant news the project has brought upon us! An Even Better Arbourthorne is a project that aims to develop and create fantastic, long-term opportunities to build a better future for the children, their families and the Arbourthorne Community! Growtheatre has been presented with the wonderful opportunity to create a partnership with Arbourthorne Community Primary School, to provide support with the running of the project. Throughout An Even Better Arbourthorne, we are setting up a range of early projects and schemes that will begin to address: Food Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Health and Nutrition, Enterprise and Local Action!

Here are just some of the fantastic schemes people are getting involved with!

• Family Feast – cooking and sharing food together at the school’s Family Feast sessions.
• The Big Dig – gathering a team to work on the school’s community house garden to plant lots of lovely fruit and vegetables.
• Fuel Strand – finding ways to reduce the costs of energy in homes.
• Community Fridge – we have applied to the Community Fridge Network for a fridge and freezer and plan to redistribute surplus food through a Community Fridge scheme. We will also develop food, nutrition and cooking projects connected with the Fridge.
• Action Stations! – a small grants scheme put in place to provide small amounts of money to support ideas that would benefit the community.

The project has had a brilliant reception from parent volunteers, staff and children in Arbourthorne and has had some fantastic supporters such as;

• Experience Days (www.experiencedays.co.uk)
• TeamSport Karting Sheffield (https://www.team-sport.co.uk/go-karting-sheffield/)
• Monkey Bizness (https://www.monkey-bizness.co.uk/indoor-play-centres/sheffield)
• Sheffield Sharks (http://sheffieldsharks.co.uk/)
•  Co-op Northern Avenue, Arbourthorne

We look forward to sharing more news on An Even Better Arbourthorne Project over the next coming months!

-Paige

After a whole year of working with Growtheatre it is nice to reflect on the wonderful time I have been able to share with the Youth Theatre facilitators and the participants! Working with all three groups on a Thursday evening is a fantastic way of learning how to interact with different age groups and also see just how developed the groups are right from Juniors, through Intermediates and into the Seniors.

Being a volunteer with the theatre group has also allowed my own learning to expand vastly. Working with drama and nature at the same time has opened my eyes to whole other ways of developing and exploring theatre, whilst playing lots of games and having loads and loads of fun every week! As well as studying drama and other elements of performance, Growtheatre also offers a unique opportunity to get involved with and learn new skills such as design work, whittling, building fires and many more! Activities in which I love assisting in with each group!

Growtheatre is like no other company I have worked with before and each week is filled with brand new and exciting experiences and opportunities, a year on and I can’t wait for many more sessions to come with the Theatre group!

– Paige Liddle

Growtheatre Volunteer