An historical and political perspective

by NAYT President Roger Hill

The creative use of young people’s time

The term youth theatre’ has been used in recent years to denote the creative use of young people’s spare time through the medium of theatre and drama.

The activity grew out of schools drama, enlightened amateur theatre and community drama initiatives. It is not now tied to any single institutional allegiance and involves theatrical performances created by many different groupings of young people.

New groups and organisations describing themselves as youth theatres have emerged steadily since the early 1980s to make up an estimated total of 700 groups active today throughout the United Kingdom. This represents a huge growth in the numbers of young people involved and a big development of youth theatre-related work within many areas of cultural activity.

11-20 year-olds are the main participants in youth theatre. But a range of factors (such as responses in the past to mass unemployment and earlier maturation rates amongst young people) has resulted in an enlarged age-range which now extends from 5 to 30 years and older.

Nearly all youth theatre work is undertaken on a full or part-time basis by leaders from a wide range of backgrounds - for example, education, theatre and youth work. It is generally true that, whatever its source of support, youth theatre owes its rather ad hoc growth to a large number of committed and hard-working individuals.

A short history

In the summer of 1956 Michael Croft undertook a production of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” with a group of former pupils from Alleyne’s School in Dulwich where he had been teaching. Youth theatre’s first public manifestation was thus an emancipa tion of the school play whose tradition had been long, but fairly conservative.

Many developments flowed from this beginning, often in the field of education. Michael Croft’s project grew in scope and reputation, despite many struggles for official recognition and funding. In 1961 it was given the title National Youth Theatre. By the time of its 30th Anniversary Season in 1986, also the year of Croft’s death, it had established a solid tradition of multiple productions during its summer season, related outreach work and international tours drawing upon young people from all over the country.

Of the youth theatre developments inspired by Michael Croft’s work many also took the form of summer schools involving young people from a wide geographical area, eg the long-established Manchester Youth Theatre.

In the 1970s local education authorities in places like Leicestershire, Devon and Northumberland established county youth theatres. More recently, comprehensive youth theatre development which emphasises year-round work rather than the summer-school format has been initiated by education authorities in Wigan, Nottingham and elsewhere. Meanwhile, National Youth Theatre summer schools have been set up in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Today there are now many regional youth theatre festivals and gatherings held each year throughout the country.

By the 1980s many people working in the youth theatre movement felt that it needed a new and broader base to aid development. Hence, the National Association of Youth Theatres (NAYT) was set up in 1982 to work, through group membership and an elected executive committee, on developing and increasing youth theatre activity nationally. One outcome of this initiative was the creation in 1986 of the Scottish National Association of Youth Theatres. Another outcome was the establishment, under the auspices of NAYT, of a National Resource Centre for Youth Theatre in Birmingham. In recent years this invaluable NAYT resource has moved to a new base within Darlington Arts Centre.

Much of the early proliferation of youth theatre work occurred in the area of education and extra-curricular school activity. By the 1970s however, a number of regional repertory theatres had established their own groups that often grew and flourished through contact with theatre professionals. Today, with Arts Council encouragement, many - even most - major theatres sponsor youth theatre activities as an integral part of their policy.

From the 1980s to the present day local government departments concerned with recreation and youth work have realised that youth theatre has much to offer young people in an era of (sometimes enforced) leisure. Increasingly therefore youth and community centres have sought to add drama groups to their widening range of activities.

The need for debate

Youth theatre work has yet to receive the benefits of a full national debate about its principles and practice. But a number of important questions are slowly being resolved through discussions between youth theatre members, practitioners and representatives of funding bodies.

Is, for example, the value of youth theatre to be found in the process of making theatre, a process so beneficial to young people in terms of increased self-possession and capacity for social action, or in the productions themselves with their standards of finesse and exactitude? The emphasis in this debate of ‘process and product” has shifted towards the former, but it is generally felt that both elements must be closely related in any true national evaluation of the work.

A clear definition of the youth theatre leaders professionalism - itself a unique amalgam of educational, theatre and youth work skills - has yet to be established as a basis for generous public support and funding. In discussion people are concerned about the extent to which youth theatre performances should embody the standards and techniques of professional theatre or equally persuasive but uniquely expressive qualities of its own. More traditional institutions like the National Youth Theatre embody the former purpose and have through their work advanced a number of young people towards work in professional theatre. However, there is a growing awareness among more local groups that youth theatre embodies a social process in which young people’s performances function beyond any artistic or professional purpose as a potentially radical renewal of social perspective, not merely for the participants but for the communities to which they belong.

In the work of a number of groups youth theatre is essentially a non-political activity without an apparent ideology. But there is a recent tendency for both process and product to be concerned with issues of racism, sexism and disadvantage. Many leaders now concentrate on handing over responsibility for the theatre-making process to their groups, an empowering act that is also essentially political.

None of these discussions will be easily resolved whilst there is a strong disparity between the levels of support enjoyed by centralised summer-school operations and the sometimes barely funded, often voluntarily-led majority of youth theatre groups. In fact the most appropriate means to develop youth theatre work is currently being debated by proponents of centralised funding for ‘quality’ projects and advocates of a wide network of well-supported local groups which meet regularly all year round.

The idea is gaining acceptance that all youth theatre activities need support and that local and national funding bodies have a part to play in sustaining them. At the same time the nationwide network of groups is still far from complete and the National Association of Youth Theatres has dedicated its work to this development. The disparity in provision of youth theatre around the country has been countered by recent development projects in rural areas and on large estates on the edge of cities. This trend has partly redressed the unfortunate erosion of support to existing groups from local authorities affected by Government strictures on public spending.

Youth theatre in Europe and worldwide

Elsewhere youth theatre has advanced in line with the differing social and cultural emphases of individual countries. Through mainland Europe, where there are huge discrepancies of support and development, it enjoys a wide variety of cultural affiliations. In Austria and Finland for example, it has evolved out of a strong amateur theatre tradition with the help of supportive youth work. Danish Youth Theatre has also received its encouragement from youth work and the diversity within the educational system and plays an important role in social education and theatrical experimentation. In Portugal a similar tradition has been recovered since the return to civilian government in 1974 which has lent a strong socio-cultural dimension to the work.

There are, by contrast, in France and Malta strong links with formal education, particularly drama training. In the Netherlands much work is centred on professional theatre companies. Whether youth theatre development is sparse, as in Flanders, or strong and well supported, as in Germany, it is generally felt that the work is given insufficient public support and status. Certainly, the largely world-wide recession of the 1990s has produced cutbacks in the public subsidy of the arts in most European countries and youth theatre initiatives have been seriously affected by this.

It is much harder to obtain a picture of youth theatre in other parts of the world but there are strong developments in the United States. In India and South-East Asia, where subsidised professional theatre is less common, youth theatre forms part of a strong community drama movement. In Australia an impressive tradition of innovation and social relevance in youth theatre has developed out of the creative coalition of young performers and professional practitioners in young peoples theatre and community-based theatre.

Despite the lack of a world-wide organisation which embraces youth theatre work, a spirit of Internationalism has been greatly advanced in recent years by the increasing number of international exchange visits between groups. In 1982 the first European Children’s Theatre Encounter was held in Belgium with 120 children aged 11-16 and in 1987 200 young people aged 16-25 from 19 European countries attended the first European Youth Theatre Encounter in Stratford-on-Avon. Both events have continued to be hosted by European countries on a regular basis throughout the 1990s.

These contacts have also served to highlight different attitudes to youth theatre’s expressive purpose, differences which reflect issues in the professional field. The idea of training, professionalism and an established theatre technique has been more influential in, for example, Eastern European Youth Theatre work than in the more experimental, socially orientated work of western Europe and the United States.

Youth theatre is for all

In the United Kingdom during the 1990s youth theatre has responded to changing social and economic conditions in a number of ways. An increasing national emphasis on training initiatives has offered an opportunity for the movement to consider the nature and structure of its professionalism at a national level and to create initiatives for skills development and accredited leadership courses. One landmark event of this process was the National Training Conference organised in 1992 in Sheffield by NAYT. Many youth theatre groups have also taken advantage of their capacity for distinctive and original work by moving into cross-art-form projects. This has reinforced youth theatre’s role as a medium with potential for considerable experimentation.

One outcome of the strong growth of youth theatre in the 1980s and 1990s has been the proliferation of small semi-professional performance companies created by former members of youth theatre groups. In this way youth theatre has had a significant impact upon the overall development of theatre culture.

"Theatre is for All", the Arts Council’s Theatre Enquiry Report in 1987, classified youth theatre as part of ‘The Wider Theatre of Tomorrow’. But its development is as much a part of the wider theatre of any age emerging from the grassroots to assume a strategic significance.

Youth theatre: What destiny?

Is the destiny of youth theatre to be: A brief but salutary radicalisation of theatre’s social purpose; the expressive function of a nascent social revolution; a newly-established element in a leisure-centred culture; or a compound of all or any of these? In the end its destiny will depend upon the strength and finesse with which it is advocated in the years to come.