What’s a YMT Skills Course like?

When you arrive…

All the Skills Courses begin on Monday afternoon and end on the Saturday with a performance to friends and family.

When you arrive, you’ll be met by members of the pastoral team (chaperones) at the venue. You’ll be staying in residential accommodation (usually a boarding school or University). This means that all the facilities, including bedrooms, rehearsal and dining rooms, are all on site.

You’ll be shown to your room - boys and girls are accommodated on separate floors, usually in shared rooms, and you’ll be with people who are roughly your own age.

After that, you’ll meet the artistic team. There will usually be a Director, a Musical Director and a Choreographer, plus assistants. If your parent/carer has travelled with you, they’ll get a chance to meet the team too.

Warming Up

The project begins!  Usually there will be a range of warm-up sessions lasting 20-30 minutes each in drama, music/singing and movement. Don't worry if you don't know anyone - everyone else is in the same position! Theatre games are often used to help participants learn each others' names and to help in the 'getting to know you' process.  
It's all part of the fun!

Devising the Project

The Director will have come along with an idea and will have discussed this with other members of the Artistic Team. Projects vary widely - sometimes a story or poem is used as inspiration, or a topical or historical event, or myths or fairy tales, or a particular performance style such as clowning or circus, or it could be something specific to the region in which the project takes place. The range is very wide!  What is common to most, though, is that YOUR input is crucial…

Your Ideas

From the very first day you may be asked to contribute ideas. Ideas come in many forms - during the course you may be asked to write song lyrics, or you may be asked to invent a movement sequence or a dance. In your drama work you may be asked to invent characters or to suggest ideas for situations or storylines. Slowly but surely, a brand new musical emerges…

The Grand Plan

The 'grand plan' is that by lunchtime on Saturday, a brand new piece of original music theatre has been created - by you!  At 2pm on the last day family and friends are invited along to watch your presentation, which normally lasts about half an hour. They are always amazed at how much can be achieved in six days. One reason for that is because we work you very hard!

Hard Graft

We work very long hours! Usually after breakfast at 8.15 we start working at 9am or 9.30am with a physical warm-up. There is always a break mid-morning to grab a drink and a snack, and you have an hour for lunch. Again there is a mid-afternoon tea break and later an hour for the evening meal. But even then, it’s not over! The final session of the day runs from 7pm to 9pm. Typically 'quieter' and less demanding activities take place in this period, such as discussion or perhaps prop-making or lyric writing. But one night this session is not quiet at all, because it is the infamous cabaret night! And that deserves a section for itself...

Cabaret!

Most Summer Skills have a cabaret night, where you get the chance to perform whatever you want!  Favourite musical theatre or pop songs, street dance, whatever you like to do, you can! You may have an idea with your new friends.  Basically, it's your night!  And we usually have a bit of a party at the same time. You’ll also get the chance to get advice from your practitioners if you are serious about a career in the performing arts. But mostly it's just a fun and memorable night, and a great way to celebrate the work you've been doing.

Making Friends and Having Fun

These are probably the most important elements of the whole week!  But we also encourage you to learn new skills and to find out what is expected of professional performers.  Working together on a Summer Skills course is one of the best ways to make great friends, to share a unique experience and to come out at the other end proud of what you achieved and more confident as a performer and a person. You also get a YMT t-shirt  to show your family and friends, and bring back memories for years to come….

To find out more about what you'll get out of a Skills Course, click here.

To check dates and venues, click here.

To book a course, click here.