So the story goes that Katie Mitchell went to see her daughter's school play, and wasn't very impressed. Mitchell is one of the most prominent theatre directors in Europe, and at the time was an artistic associate at the National Theatre. She decided to develop a project which might support teachers through a creative process low on time, and high on cast sizes.
Together with a motley crew of some of the finest theatre professionals working in Britain today, she descended on her daughter's school for a period of investigative research and development.
Designer Vicki Mortimer, director Lyndsey Turner, Mitchell and a few others tested the types of rhythms that young people responded to at particular ages, they interrogated what was the optimum length of scenes and stories, and how many lines young actors could cope with.
What they found was enlightening, but in its initial form the project was simply unsustainable, and so it sat on a shelf until Emil and the Detectives came to the main stage at the National. Writer Carl Jenkins had already adapted the story from Erich Kastner's 1929 novel for children, so adapting it once more seemed like the perfect text to complement Mitchell's research.
A few iterations later, and it has become one of the founding plays now available to primary school groups through Let's Play, which offers primary schools scripts, musical scores, backing tracks, and the CPD they need to produce their own show.
Lorna McGinty now leads the project, and recognises the challenge of creating work for such a young age group: ‘Commissioning for young people is such a nuanced and tricky endeavour. We're looking for world class theatre – artistically excellent plays – but also ones that children are going to be interested in, and be able to perform effectively.’
Silva Semerciyan wrote Quest for Arthur for the first year of Let's Play and took the challenge in her stride. ‘The King Arthur legend brings with it a wealth of characters, so I had a brilliant head start when it came to writing a play for a large cast,’ she says. With half the battle won, she then wanted to ensure the experience of every individual cast member would be a fulfilling one:
Everyone should do youth theatre in my opinion
‘I gave every character a name - ‘Mavis Gobslogger’ is much more fun to play than ‘witch number 2’.’
Semerciyan also created ‘clusters’ of actors to operate in the place of single characters. The character would serve the same plot function but allow more actors their moment to shine. Narration could then be shared amongst the chorus, meaning the total number of speaking parts was limitless.
She conducted her own period of research and found the most valuable consultant was her six-year-old daughter, who had a huge impact on the final outcome.
‘I love children's literature and central to most is the idea that young people's experience and imagination should be treated with respect,’ explains Semerciyan ‘so while writing, I continually asked myself—does this feel true? Will young people enjoy it?’
NT Connections
Let's Play of course follows in the footsteps of its big sister: a project which has commissioned 10-12 new plays for young people every year for the 21 years since it started. NT Connections has had a huge impact not only on the amount of work available for young casts but also on young people's access to the theatre around the country.
Ola Animashawun has recently become the Connections lead dramaturg, working with writers to develop their plays ahead of the first festival under his guidance in 2020. He began life as an actor in community theatre in Peckham, but anyone who knows their new writing history will recognise him as the founder of the young writers’ programme at the Royal Court, and the mentor to a generation of extraordinarily talented playwrights.
‘Everyone should do youth theatre in my opinion. Its about learning about who you are and learning about what society is and what life is, and what life has to offer and what life could be. So it goes way beyond just doing drama. It's cross curricular, cross community, cross diversity, cross ethnicity. Its about life,’ he says.
Animashawun works with writers in a number of different ways, dependent on what is required, but the brief is always specific and pre-determined: the play will be between 45 and 60 minutes long, appropriate for a company of 13-19 year olds, and suitable for a minimum cast size of 8 and a maximum of 30.
‘At which point the writer's eyes usually widen, and the blood drains from their cheeks,’ he says, before echoing the challenge that Let's Play poses to its writers, ‘It's got to be a play that young people want to be in, and are able to process and take ownership of.’
Beyond that the idea can be anything, as long as it plays to the strengths of youth theatre and young people, who may have limited resources and rehearsal time.
Animashawun is very keen that all the plays be workshopped with young people as part of their development. Most recently he has worked with a school in Edinburgh where young people's responses were mined to help transform an idea into drama. The writer then scripted the first scene and took it back to the group to read and reflect on, ahead of completing the first draft.
Workshops like these give them the chance not only to meet a living writer, but to get an insight into a process which begins with the formless hunch of an idea, and becomes a wonderfully intricate text for performance. Animashawun wholeheartedly believes in this part of the process. For as many young people as possible he wants to offer the opportunity of taking ownership over the work they will ultimately perform.
National Youth Music Theatre
Having commissioned and premiered more than 50 new works since it began, National Youth Music Theatre is also helping to sculpt a theatrical landscape with young people at its heart.
The Ballad of Salomon Pavey was developed with a group of boys at Belmont Prep School in the mid-seventies, and then mounted at the Edinburgh Fringe. It won a Fringe First award and became the foundation stone of an organisation which has continued to make excellent music theatre for the next generation ever since.
Artistic director Jeremy Walker calls it ‘happenstance’ that the right people came together at the right time in the early days, but since then, new writing has very deliberately been at the heart of a youth theatre which has helped develop some of today's best-known actors. Alumni include Sheridan Smith, Idris Elba, Matt Lucas, and the first black female actor to play Cosette in Les Miserables, Amara Okereke.
Like Connections, scripts for NYMT are developed through workshops, and like its National Theatre counterpart the feedback and opinions of the young people they consult are taken very seriously.
‘It's very exciting for the writers, and obviously for the cast,’ says Walker, ‘because they are originating these roles and these characters – they are putting in more than they sometimes realise into the creation of a piece.’
For the first time this year, NYMT made an open call for submissions from teams of writers and composers for next year's season at The Other Palace. The brief was open in terms of theme as long as it satisfied a company size of 30 plus, with a band of 8-10.
Walker admits that the decision-making process will be difficult because of the wealth of excellent work submitted already, but ultimately the decision will come down to how much value the process can add to the chosen project.
‘There are those that are very polished, but there are others where we feel we might be of more value, in terms of how we can help develop that piece, which I think is more important,’ he says.
Just as their work with young people strives to develop performance skills, their work with writers is no different in supporting ideas from genesis to production.
Young people's plays with female central roles
- The Wasp by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
- Iron by Rona Munro
- Face to the Wall by Martin Crimp
- Girls Like That by Evan Placey
- Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale
- Boudica by Tristan Bernays
- Nell Gwynn by Jessica Swale
- Emilia by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
- Welcome to Thebes by Moira Buffini.