Youth Music Theatre Holds Summer 2012 Skills Courses in Edinburgh, Kingston and Across UK

Youth Music Theatre UK's residential Summer Skills courses are back for 2012. Theatre fans between the ages of 11 and 21 are invited to discover their potential, meet like-minded friends and earn a grade 6 certificate in musical theatre from the prestigious Trinity Guildhall. All skills courses are fully residential with accommodation and rehearsal space located in some of the country's best universities and boarding schools.

Hemel Hempstead Summer Skills

Lockers Park School,Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire 30th July - 4th August

Richard Coe is director for our Hemel course, working on themes from Durrenmatt's classic tragi comedy, The Visit. Imagine a town not very far from yours. Where once there was wealth, prosperity and happiness now there is desolation, despair and poverty. But there IS hope. A Multi-billionairess, once a resident of the town, is returning and has promised to restore it to its past glory. But what will she want in return? How far will the townsfolk go to get their hands on the cash? Will morality or greed prevail?

Richard will be working with composer Pippa Cleary who won The Times Christmas Carol Competition in 2011. Pippa is a rising young composer for musical theatre having had hit shows at the Edinburgh Festival with Jet, Set Go and The Great British Soap Opera, both of which transfrred to London. Very excitingly, she has just been commissioned to write the new version of Sue Townsend's The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole for Leicester's Curve Theatre.

Edinburgh Summer Skills

Fettes College - 6 to 11 August 2012

Spend a week working with director Pete Gallagher (right) and his team of musical director and choreographer creating your own brand new musical! Pete is a hugely experienced West End and film performer, writer and director and his West End theatre credits include: Oklahoma!, Moonlight and Magnolias, The Pirates of Penzance, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Dr Dolittle, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Show, The Mystery Plays, Buddy, Godspell, Fields of Ambrosia, Frankenstein, Up On The Roof, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Lautrec, and Guys and Dolls and many, many others...

Farce. An old fashioned word, some might say. But what does it mean? Funny! Sometimes slapstick funny. Sometimes crazy funny. Sometime side-splittingly, ridiculously, tear-forming hysterically funny. In 'A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum' a girl loves a boy but is to be sold to a ridiculously vain soldier so she pretends she has the plague and feigns death while others take on idiotic disguises to try and catch each other out... in Ahrens and Flaherty's 'Lucky Stiff' a man has to pass his dead uncle off as a tourist in a wheelchair for a week in order to win a fortune while being pursued by another who will inherit all if he fails...doors slam as people who have to find each other miss meeting by seconds; everyone double/triple/quadruple crosses each other in the most ridiculous of ways....and the trousers of someone, somewhere always fall down just as a vicar enters the room. This is farce! The funniest, silliest, most riotous place in the world.

You'll be rehearsing, eating and sleeping in the stunning surroundings of Fettes College, rumoured to be the inspiration for Hogwarts. This will be a week of theatre making, working with a highly respected creative team to devise your own musical in just a week.

Kingston Summer Skills

Kingston University, London - 13 to 18 August 2012

You will be working with director Gemma Fairlie (right). Gemma came through The National Theatre's Directors'course and is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company Education team and RSC assistant director for King Lear and The Seagull, the Regional Tour of Julius Caesar and The Two Gentlemen of Verona; she has recently directed Bee Detective (UK Summer tour), A Midsummer Night's Dream for Oxford Shakespeare Company and Anthony Neilson's Realism for National Theatre of Scotland and the Edinburgh International Festival.She will be working with composer Sonum Batra, a YMT regular who trained at King's College, London and has recently spent a year exploring music making in Latin America.

Gemma's project for our Kingston University residential course is around the classic adventure story of Tom's Midnight Garden. She would like to create a new musical with you filled with intrigue, excitement and danger. A story that speaks to us about loneliness, friendship and the mystery of the supernatural, but she needs your help to create the characters, story and songs. Is Tom a modern boy living in a flat in London 2012? Who are the ghosts? You have a week to put together a new version of the story and it's going to need your ideas.

Godalming Summer Skills

Priory's Field School - 20 to 25 August 2012

You'll be working with Director Lewis Barfoot (right) who gave up a career as a family GP to become an actress, singer and director. Her work includes the eccentric History of the Pomegranate combining physical theatre and song. Along with Lewis will be choreographer Vincent Manna, trained at Ballet Rambert and now a teacher at LAMDA in London; many of you will know Vince from previous YMT productions and as the choreographic face of YMT auditions around the country.

You will be rehearsing, sleeping and eating at Prior's Field School, with its beautiful grounds and legendary homemade food.

Lewis will be creating a brand new musical inspired by the life and works of the beautiful, spirited and bold Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Born in 1907 in Mexico, Frida had polio at the age of 6 and was bullied for being a "peg leg". Aged 18, whilst studying for a medical career, she was seriously injured in a bus accident. Bed bound and in great pain, she started to paint amazing and original pieces of art. She is famous for saying: "The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to". Have you ever felt the way Frida did about something? Frida's life was rich with colour, passion, heartache, Mexican rhythms, Fiesta's and Revolution. Lewis would like to create a musical about this courageous woman and needs your help.

Visit YMT UK's website to find out more about Summer Skills courses. Book now with spring saving rates, available until Thursday 31 May 2012; vsit the website for more information or call 0844 415 4858.

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