Staging Stories

'Staging Stories' - the show that we are going to perform on 29th and 30th of April this year - is as ambitious a project as it is possible to imagine!

At the end of last year we contacted various primary schools and young people from the Inverclyde area and asked them to write us stories. We offered them titles as inspiration, but it was also totally open for them to write whatever they wanted. The idea was that we would pick our favourite stories from the various schools and see if we could work on them in drama class and turn them into plays to be performed on the Beacon main stage. 

We ended up receiving way over 100 stories. Our tutors sifted through them and brought some of their favourites into class. The various classes then took these stories and started to improvise ideas as to how they could be produced for the stage. There were some really exciting ideas and certain classes were drawn to certain stories, soon they various stories were whittled down to 8. 

Over the christmas holidays our tutors took the stories we had decided on and, taking inspiration from the work in class, started to write individual plays and musicals. 

By the time we came back in January we had 8 brand new plays for all our different classes to perform. They range greatly in subject matter and style. From the story-book 'The Princess and the Peacock' to the dark drama 'The Bully With The Knife' via the outrageous musical 'To The Moon and Back'. 

Normally our main stage shows rely on a group of our older, more experienced students taking the lead roles and everybody else slotting in as a chorus member. But this year we have been more ambitious and every year group has their own story to tell, almost everybody has to say something and we have various stories where the oldest member is 9 year old! So it has been a challenge and a joy to give these very young people such great responsibility. 

As we write this we are about to enter tech week, getting all the props, the sound and lighting together. It has been a massive undertaking but we are sure it will all be worth it in the end!

Ctr Alt Del

The senior class at BYT have been working on creating and performing their latest piece 'Ctrl+Alt+Del', a play that looked at some really interesting aspects of social media and how it affects the lives of young people. The piece was performed as part of a pilot certification process in conjunction with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, we are really happy to be collaborating with the RCS and hope that it is a long and fruitful relationship!

This video shows the class in rehearsals after they had devised a new movement piece know as 'The hashtag dance'. 


The play looked at many different subject matters such as cyber bullying and finding love online.
The group performed the piece in the studio theatre at Beacon on the 23rd and 24th of January alongside our 1st and 2nd year class who performed some devised scenes based on Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' - both pieces were directed by Megan Yeomans and Michael Collins.

Next up will be our primary classes who shall be performing 'A Fairytale in Greenock' - a devised musical - in May. We are just starting rehearsals today and it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun!

Trinity Guildhall Results

We had really great results in our recent Trinity Guildhall certificates.  The classes created all sorts of interesting work to achieve extremely high grades.  You can read all about it here.

Our seniors recently had a visit from Junction 25 theatre company, it was a really interesting workshop that was both fun and thought provoking.

Summer School 2013 - Day One

Today was the first day of our Summer School.  The idea is that we, the tutors, walk into the room with no ideas other than a few exercises.  From these exercises we work with the young people to create a show that we will perform on the Friday.

After playing some games to get to know one another (we were delighted welcome a lot of new members) and a few warm-ups we were ready to get stuck into the main business of the day. We started by doing an exercise called sonic-painting that involved listening to music and feeling both our own and others faces to create a image that was entirely unique.

After this we then tried to turn our drawings into real 3D images using our bodies, this made for some really interesting shapes that we then moved and created some intricate dance sequences.

From these images we wrote down a number of words that popped into our head and we started to create more and more inspirational material from these words. After our younger ones had gone home we went back to drawing and made some pictures about memories that we had. We then selected our favourite items from these pictures and devised short scenes.

After these we started to piece together ideas that kept popping up.  Oddly the Queen and things turning into monsters were recurring, as was the concept of 'breaking out'. So we shall see where these lead tomorrow...

End of Another Term

Today was the end of the term as we break up for the summer - concluding what has been our first year as Beacon Youth Theatre. It has been a high octane period of activity - to read more about our show 'Land of Lost Things' have a look at our director Andrew McGregor's blog here.

The last few weeks have seen us working on various different projects. The P1-2s were acting out scenes from Katie Morag, whilst the P3-5s devised short plays about super-heros, the P6-7s were looking at the legend of the kelpie and our seniors worked on 'actioning' - a way of approaching text using Stanislavsky's system.

So a big variety of stuff has been going, we are now looking forward to our summer school which starts on Monday 1st July.  This is where we spend a week creating a show from absolutely nothing!  It's always exciting, and a little nerve-wracking, for our teachers as nobody know exactly how it's going to work.

We are also very pleased to announce that our tutor Megan Yeomans has gained a BA(hons) in visual art, so well done to Megan!  Have a great summer everyone!

Check out our new video showing you what we get up to at Beacon Youth!

End of the year

The Dog-ShiP Enterprise!

Well that's us all wrapped up and finished for the year at BYT. Our Seniors went out with a bang with their show 'Make Your Mark'. This was a look at a number of different ideas based on what the possibilities of our after-life could be. The show ended with a great moment where we asked the audience to make their mark anywhere on the Wallace Bennett theatre. This was the last ever performance in the space and it was amazing to see all the lovely, thought-provoking, messages that people left.

An audience member makes her mark

Some more marks

One of or tutors has written about his experiences of youth theatre in the Arts Guild through the years, you can read about them here.

 Our younger ones also had a wee showing of their work so far. We learned about the adventures of Mr Skinny by the  rimary 1/2s, the Land of Lost Things from our P3/5s and the Dog Ship Enterprise from the P6/7s.  These ideas will all be used in creating our large-scale theatre extravaganza that will be on the Beacon main stage in May and will feature the whole youth theatre.  Thanks to the parents and grandparents who came along to our temporary accommodation (and thanks to the Scouts for the loan of their hut!) and gave the children a chance to show you their ideas.

P1/2s enjoy some cake in-between rehearsing 'Mr Skinny'!

A couple of weeks ago our younger classes said goodbye to the Arts Guild in the most fitting way, by eating lots of cakes!  We had a great wee Christmas party and said farewell.  We can't wait to move into our new home at the Beacon, it's going to be a fantastic facility that we will definitely make the most of!

Drama is always better when it involves cake and biscuits!

All the staff at the BYT would like to wish our members and their families a great Christmas and we look forward to welcoming everyone back to our new home in the new year!