| Youth
Drama |
• Building trusting and open relationships with young people
• Developing a fun, safe group dynamic
• Giving young people freedom to explore their own ideas
• Encouraging an ethos of working together to better ourselves
• Raising levels of confidence
| We
believe in helping children and young people to find their voice
and give them a platform where they can express that voice! |
Act Now work with a variety of youth groups in Hull.
We work on long term projects where we devise performances with the young people. We also are hired by groups on a temporary basis to deliver a series of sessions. These can include performances and workshops. They may be focused on a particular issue or just general drama sessions.
We work to build a safe and open group dynamic, where the children or young people feel free to explore their own ideas. We play games and deliver exercises to create a sense of working together and trust within the group. Sessions involve improvising as different characters or creating a piece of theatre that is shared at the end the session.
We have created many performances with youth groups which have been and continue to be delivered at celebrations and theatre festivals such as creative voice.
Through working in partnership with existing youth groups we know we can
have a lasting positive effect on our community and the young people within
it.
| Through
getting up in front of and audience and performing a great sense
of confidence can be achieved. |
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St
Michael’s Youth Project |
(Orchard Park Estate)
Act Now first joined with the St Michael’s
Youth Project team in 2006. Our relationship with the young people and
staff here has grown into a supportive and encouraging community.
When we first came to work with the group many of them had reservations
about improvising and performing, but though commitment and with support
they soon started to break down barriers and became willing and open individuals.
Now the group is filled with talented and passionate young people all
working together to create dynamic and innovative theatre.
Abi as "Bob"
St Mike’s drama group
has performed at many events, to large audiences, from Christmas celebrations
to street theatre in the centre of town.
They also have performed at the creative voice festival organized by Hull
City Arts.
The core members of the club have recently decided to name their drama group "Odd Socks Theatre" partly as an indication of the bizzaire and quirky material they create and partly to represent their obsession with odd socks!!
Nathan and Rhea @ Creative Voice 2008
ACT
1 |
(Amateur Community Theatre)
Act Now with Act 1 are based
at the BCAE (Bransholme Community Arts Enterprise)
Act 1 are an amazing and inspiring group, started and run by parents
of the area to provide the local young people with a group where they
can develop skills in drama and dance and be involved with a positive
activity all year round.
We are currently collaborating on a two year project, in which the aim is to build the groups confidence and skill enough to have a final performance in a main theatre in the centre of Hull.
Act 1 was full of energy and enthusiasm from the start. The drama group
has more than doubled in numbers since we began and we now have a dedicated
core group who love to perform.
At the start of the project we concentrated on developing their sense
of play, acting on impulse and saying “YES” to ideas. We created
a performance with them entitled “Clowning Around”, which
was their first showing and was performed to parents and friends.
We moved forward to focus on issue based theatre and the young people decided to create a performance about bullying specifically addressing peer pressure. In this type of work we analyse emotions and reasons behind people’s actions. We also created a short film with the children, advertising the responsibility to help those who are being bullied.
We are addressing different subjects and exploring
different types of theatre each term, but the focus is always kept on
the group creating their own material and delivering a performance each
term.
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Bright Sparks is an amazing
project that gives young people the opportunity to take the lead.
Every week we have been supporting a group of young people to lead children
through drama games and exercises.
We have equipped the leading group with techniques and skills to create
and develop a performance with the children for a showing at the end of
each term.
This project is extremely successful as it gives the young people involved
a great sense of achievement and responsibility.
They have all discovered that they have great talents in communicating with children and they all plan to gain qualifications and seek opportunities in youth work and drama for future job prospects.
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Every week for 4 weeks Act Now began the sessions with a 20 minute performance raising issues that would affect this group of teenagers.
The main aim of this was to grab their attention and get them passionate about the issues that affect them directly. We then opened the session up for discussion in order to delve deeper and find out their opinions and beliefs.
In the second half of the sessions we would split off into groups and the girls would create a piece of drama related to what we had discussed. This was then performed at the end of the session.
This whole project was filmed and edited into a DVD which highlighted all the challenges raised, solutions suggested and celebrated cultural diversity. We made a copy for everyone in the group to keep.