Calderdale Theatre School has several original plays available for performance by other youth theatres. All have been successful and are available with production notes.
Calderdale Theatre School is the Youth Theatre for young people from all over Calderdale. We currently have 85 members - young people aged 11 - 19 drawn from every area of the borough. Formed in 1968 by the Education Department as part of the arts provision and as a companion school for the Music School and the P. E. School, we have been an independent voluntary organisation since 1992.
We meet every Saturday in term time when the students get the opportunity to work with professional actors and drama teachers on theatre based skills workshops. These cover all aspects of theatre including mime, improvisation, directing and voice. We draw on a wide network of practitioners (some of them ex-students) to provide specialist workshops on dance, stage fighting, mask work, Alexander technique, stand up comedy and many more.
We try to give our students the opportunity to take part in full length productions in professional venues. In 2008 we put on productions of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Brecht translated by Frank McGuiness, The Pilgrimage by Paul Goetzee, Oliver Twist by Neil Bartlett and 1968 a devised play to celebrate our 40th anniversary and performed by our Year 7 group. In 2009 the whole Theatre School took part in His Dark Materials, adapted from the Northern Lights trilogy of novels by Philip Pullman by Nicholas Wright for the National Theatre. In 2010 the older students and Year 8 joined together in a production of Coram Boy, adapted from the award winning novel by Jamila Gavin for the National Theatre while the Year 7, 9 & 10 members performed in Alan Bennett’s adaptation of Wind in the Willows. In 2010 we celebrated our ‘coming of age’ as an independent voluntary organization by staging a production of Ruckus in the Garden in 24 hours as part of the first Halifax Festival. This was so successful that Square Chapel invited us back for a repeat performance which we did in January 2011. In April we performed The Wicked Lady complete with trapeze and music written by the cast, followed by 3 one act plays in June and an evening of (very) short plays and music as part of Halifax Festival 2011.
We are very excited to be part of National Theatre Connections 2012. We will be performing one of the 10 new plays written specially for NT Connections 2012 both at Square Chapel and at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. We will also be performing 3 other plays from the Connection series of plays as part of a two week Connections Festival at Square Chapel in March.
You can see more details and photographs of many of the above on the production pages.