Central Youth Theatre – one of the winners of our Community Dance scheme – have been encouraging its members to step out of their comfort zone. Having taken on a dance project for the very first time this year, the experience has been both challenging and rewarding.

Jessica Collings, Marketing Assistant, reveals how they made a project a success and the ways they got the whole community involved.

“Central Youth Theatre is a Wolverhampton based youth theatre which has been providing opportunities for young people for over 28 years. Up until this year however, those experiences have mostly involved drama with a little backstage. In 2011 we undertook a challenge: dance. Our goal was to engage a group of young people in dance with no previous experience or interest.

We were originally inspired to focus on dance by our involvement with Dancing for the Games, which is part of the Cultural Olympiad in the West Midlands. What followed was a year-long journey, during which both the youth theatre and its members learnt a whole lot about dancing.

On the 18th December, with the help of the BBC Performing Arts Fund, members of Central Youth Theatre will be staging an event called “Glamour and Romance & Swingtime Sweethearts”. Taking place in Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall, the event will feature original performances based on local memories of dancing, an exhibition and a tea dance for the performers and audience alike.

As an almost exclusively drama based youth theatre, how did we succeed in getting over 100 young people interested in dancing?

In the end, we stuck to what we know best – the strength of drama comes with a good story, human interest, and something that inspires emotions. So we sent the young people off collecting memories from local people who danced in the 1930s up to the 1970s. We looked at social dancing where the idea is to enjoy yourself with friends, rather than concentrating on technical expertise or competition. The young people instantly found a connection with the dancehall stories – many of the popular venues no longer exist but we were able to build a vivid picture from pure description. The tales of getting ready, arriving at the dance, and catching the eye of the girl you fancy were both familiar and completely different to the experiences of our own young people.

By bringing these stories to life on stage, the youth theatre began to engage with the dances of the time from ballroom through to rock’n’roll and the lesser known Northern Soul. Before we knew it the whole group were taking dance lessons and embracing the challenge. It was especially pleasing to see those young people who were able to discover a real love of dance, often completely unexpected.

These shows, a mix of dance and drama, were first performed during the Everybody Dance Now festival in August 2011. It is an honour to be able to keep the dancing alive, especially in an event designed for those people whose stories inspired the whole project. The group are currently in rehearsals – polishing their lines and learning new dances – and in just a few days time they will be taking to the floor once more.

We were able to encourage our young members to try something new by working out what they were already interested in. Just as drama can be found in dance or music, so their rhythms and beats can be found in other art forms from painting to acting.



Our advice? Don’t be afraid to try something new.”

Central Youth Theatre will perform Glamour and Romance & Swingtime Sweethearts this Sunday 18th December at Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton.

We are pleased to announce the winners of our Training in Musical Theatre scheme!



Through the scheme this year a total of £150,000 has been awarded to 62 students to contribute towards the costs of their musical theatre training.



10 drama schools and colleges successfully applied for a grant. They then identified their most talented and motivated performers in financial need who would not be able to complete their musical theatre training without our help. Grants have been awarded to ease the pressures of paying their tuition fees and to allow the winning students to focus on developing and growing as performers.



We believe that these bright young 'triple threat' performers will go on to have fantastic careers in musical theatre and we cannot wait to see what they achieve!



This is the 5th consecutive year we’ve run the Training in Musical Theatre scheme. In total we have awarded over £700,000 to 213 performers (which is more than 5 times the London cast of The Phantom of the Opera!) Previous winners have gone on to appear in the West End, in UK and international tours, and many are currently appearing in pantomimes up and down the country.

Past Training in Musical Theatre winner Zoe Doano on stage in Grease

Miriam O'Keeffe, Director of the BBC Performing Arts Fund, said:



“Training to be a musical theatre performer requires not only talent and dedication, but also significant financial resources. We are delighted to be able to relieve some of the burden on these hard working and promising young stars and we look forward to following their careers in the future.”





The winning colleges are:



Arts Educational Schools, London – 11 recipients



Bird College, Sidcup – 6 recipients



Cambridge Performing Arts, Cambridge – 2 recipients



Laine Theatre Arts, Epsom – 4 recipients



Midlands Academy of Dance and Drama, Nottingham – 3 recipients



Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London – 9 recipients



Royal Academy of Music, London – 10 recipients



SLP College, Leeds – 12 recipients



Urdang Academy, London – 3 recipients



WAC Performing Arts and Media College, London – 2 recipients





What some of our winners have said:



“The Royal Academy of Music is hugely grateful to the BBC Performing Arts Fund and the support that it has offered our Musical Theatre students over the years. Many students have been able to realise their dream of studying here only as a result of the financial support the BBC has generously given them.”

Stephen Minay, Musical Theatre Company Coordinator



“This grant will help me so much toward my tuition fees at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, I feel like a weight has been lifted of my shoulders. I can't thank the BBC Performing Arts Fund enough!”

Scott Slater, 1st year student at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts



“Without this support I wouldn't be able to continue living my dream at Bird College. I am forever thankful to the BBC for giving me this opportunity, funding for the arts is limited nowadays and I feel very privileged to be one of the lucky ones to be awarded support.”

Hannah Lancaster, 1st year student at Bird College



Congratulations to all the winners and we look forward to sharing your success stories in the future.



You can download a list of all the winning students here and to see the full press release please visit the BBC Media Centre website.

Hilary Strong is a freelance theatre producer and director. Having taken her company’s comedy show Let Them Eat Cake! to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, Hilary debates the advantages for performers of creating their own fringe show.



"Performers often face a period of unemployment when, traditionally, the only option is to stay by the phone waiting for the agent to ring with news of an audition or casting. Mobile phones have at least allowed the struggling performer to get on with life and take the calls on the run but there’s no denying the frustration of inactivity which can lead to many people giving up and looking for a conventional job.



The situation isn’t helped by the fact that actors are sometimes perceived as passive individuals who rely on others to create work for them and that they only have a sketchy appreciation of the complexities of producing a show. However, more and more performers are discovering the advantages of putting on their own fringe shows and are successfully forming companies to perform at Edinburgh or other fringe festivals.



Producing a fringe show trains participants to be much more than actors. At the very least, performers have to take a part-time interest in the press and marketing campaign; they will almost certainly gain some insight into stage management and technical skills, and they may even gain a working knowledge of a budget. But most of all, their exposure to other productions ensures that fringe performers gain a unique perspective of world culture that will shape their artistic ambitions in the future. This is particularly useful when preparing for drama school auditions when applicants need to select at least one contemporary play and perform an extract. Sadly, too many applicants have no idea what to choose because they haven’t seen enough plays. Their desire to act is entirely shaped by their contact with television or film – and mostly the mainstream content.



So, how difficult is it to create a company and produce a show on the fringe?

A few months back my company (Women on the Make) decided to take our comedy show Let Them Eat Cake! to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We're all grown up enough to know that the costs of producing a show can be ridiculous and the chance of success only modest but we were determined not to be defeated by the challenge and set about fundraising. We knew we needed to raise about £4,000 which sounds a lot but it’s achievable if you allow enough time.

We did car boot sales, cake stalls, music gigs, poetry recitals and wine and cheese evenings. We always added a raffle or tombola to each function and secured a few donations along the way. Some events can be very labour-intensive and car boot sales it seems are not very profitable unless you have good stock (clothes are surprisingly popular though!). We found the best earner to be a cabaret evening as long as you don’t spend too much on a venue and you have at least 50 guaranteed punters!

Hilary in Let Them Eat Cake!

Having raised the funds, you then need to sort out who does what and draw up a budget. This will depend on the scale of the project, the costs of the theatre you are using and how much you decide to spend on marketing. Edinburgh for example is hugely competitive so an advert in the official programme can be a smart move meaning that you have more chance of selling tickets in advance. The admin is time-consuming so make sure the most organised person in the group takes it on. It will include complex paper work related to the choosing of a theatre space, negotiating terms, completing entries for the programme and endless emails demanding instant attention. Everyone you deal with will set deadlines, demand receipts for every communication and insist on rigid legal contracts so make sure you choose the best person for the job.



Edinburgh can be a risky venture so it’s worth also considering smaller fringe festivals like Brighton or Bath where costs will be lower and there are far fewer shows to compete with. The important thing is to use the opportunity to produce a show that you feel enthusiastic about and which will provide you and your colleagues with creative challenges. Being in charge of the venture means that you can write your own scripts (no royalties!), adapt a well-known book (make sure you secure the rights) or reinvent an established script (anyone for an all-female Hamlet?) It’s important to agree how you will decide things as friendships can be put at risk if you end up arguing over artistic direction or the cost of the poster.



The undertaking may seem daunting but the rewards are enormous and will ensure that many more performing opportunities will be open to you afterwards."