Mentoring for National Youth Theatre
The National Youth Theatre’s charitable remit is to give accessible opportunities both onstage and backstage to young people aged 14-25 from all corners of the UK. I joined in 2016 and took both their Epic Stages and Rep courses.
NYT has engaged over 150,000 young people since 1956 and reached an audience of over 2 billion people from stadiums to studios at national and international events.
Inspired by the traditional repertory theatre model, the NYT Rep Company course offers free, practical, industry-based talent development in drama and performance over nine months to a company of NYT members.
Following a pilot in 2012, the first official Rep Company was formed in April 2013. Since then the Rep has gone from strength to strength with three West End seasons (I played Lady Macbeth at the Garrick in 2018!) and the vast majority of graduates being signed by agents and going on to professional success.
This year, as an alumna who really values the work NYT does and knows first-hand the difference it can make to a young person’s life and career, I’m very excited to become a Rep mentor. I hope I’ll be able to offer some insight to the business and culture of stage and screen, and help my mentee find her own path through what can be a thorny industry. We have to help each other, after all.
Me and Liv Dowd as Lady M and Macbeth, The Garrick, 2018. Photo by The Other Richard
“The National Youth Theatre at this moment in time is incredibly important because the way my business is going, it’s the prerogative only of kids who have got money. It was my way in because we didn’t have money to send me to drama school.”