Young Company
What is the Young Company?
The Young Company is a group for teenagers with abilities in the performing arts who may not get on very well at school. The company is a small drama group based at the egg who work during the spring and summer term on Tuesday afternoons during term-time.
You can achieve a lot – including Arts Council Arts Award. There is also a Gold Arts Award equivalent to an A level, Silver to a high GCSE and Bronze is equal to a low grade GCSE.
Our previous egg apprentice Natasha Hunt was involved in Young Company… here is her story…
Why did I get involved?
I got involved with the egg because I did not like school at all. I use to get in trouble a lot, and was picked by an art teacher to come to the egg and try the young company. After I started coming here my behavior at school calmed down and I noticed a change in myself at home and school. I think I calmed down as I was doing something I enjoyed and I was working with people that were not judgmental towards what my behavior was like. They wanted to see you enjoying the work we were doing at the egg
Bronze Arts Award
As part of our Bronze Award we took part in workshops, review shows, did research projects on our favourite artists and performed to the public. We also choose a creative workshop to take part in, and the rest of group had to join in. One person chose the Natural Theatre Company and we dressed up as the Egg Heads and walked around Bath, others chose break dance and mask work. To finish our Bronze we did a sort performance outside the egg at the Teenage Kicks Act Night. We pretended to be theatre ushers who were very bad at their jobs, and this was a lot of fun. We came up with the idea from all the different workshops we had attend and we made this into a performance. Our Bronze group performing at the Teenage Kicks Act Night SILVER ARTS AWARD
For the Silver it was a bigger challenge for the whole group as we had to work as Young Company Producers to create a night at the egg – Urban Hype. We had to arrange everything for the night so the t-shirts we were going to wear the poster the performers even if we wanted seats in the auditorium. We had to do this between seven of us and we thought making the right decision between us all was going to be hard, but we came together as a group and included everyone’s ideas to make the night happen. As well as creating a huge night we had to set our own personal challenge in the arts e.g. go to extra dance classes, help workshop assist and much more. We did not just have to do this – we had to expand it to the highest standard of work we could all do. So in the Silver we did abit of everything. MC Ghetto performing at our sold-out Urban Hype night From doing this I have built a strong relationship with the egg. The egg apprentice is a paid job that involves me coming to the egg to work Monday – Friday and helping out with various jobs e.g. work experience giving a tour around the building, workshop assisting, front of house, reception, general admin, Box Office, marketing and much more. How can you get involved? Young Company is produced by Lucy Girvan, Head of Education & Outreach at the egg, Theatre Royal Bath. To find out more details you can call him on 01225 823421 or e-mail Lucy.girvan@theatreroyal.org.uk