Guest Blog: Paul Roseby on Feeling Positive, Nurturing Talent and Celebrating a Decade of NYT Rep Company

I'm not a natural optimist. Neither am I a born pessimist, so in the burgeoning age of hybrid everything I shall declare a new word for our new year. I'm coming out as an optipessi, sitting comfortably somewhere between the two. And yet, as the heavy clouds of 2022 have passed us by, I am more than optipessi about the year ahead for our creative young cohort where their future's so bright my sunnies are coming out of hibernation.

First up, based on the success of graduates of our past NYT REP Companies, I'm feeling optimistic about the prospect of this year's offering as we celebrate our ten year anniversary of this vital free industry-alternative. In February a company of nineteen young performers and creatives will make their West End debuts at London's iconic Duke of York's Theatre, where Love Island will meet Much Ado About Nothing in our brand new remix. Over 150 actors have benefited from the NYT REP's free 'learning by doing it' approach since it launched in response to the rise in tuition fees to up to £9,000 a year in 2012.

Championing an alternative route for young talent has proved a game-changer for graduates lighting up our stages and screens like BAFTA nominee Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Lauren Lyle (Karen Pirie) and Chinenye Ezeudu (Sex Education). The collective cost for the 150+ performers to train formally would have been over £1.3 million, but thanks to our free offer REP graduates leave without student debt, with three major credits and having gained hours of experience performing on major stages to paying audiences.

Audiences are my second reason to be cheerful, with record live sports audiences of 76.2 million in the UK in 2022 proving there's nothing like live. This record was partly driven by the triumphant growth of women's football this year and in the theatre we also need to invest in new audiences, like young people. Art does have parity with sport in terms of reach and entertainment-factor, so let's not forget this at the final hurdle post-Covid-19, and make a collective commitment to see more live theatre.

Talking to our young people, they want theatre that is relevant to their lives, unafraid to take risks and above all that celebrates great storytelling. Both Bola Agbaje's Olivier award-winning Gone Too Far! at Theatre Royal Stratford East and our new gig-theatre adaptation of Bakkai will do just that.

Amongst the doom sayers and polarity of identity casting, we are inclined to forget the need of good storytelling engaging as wide an audience as possible. I love issue-based drama and have commissioned plays around race, consent, surveillance capitalism, gender and more, but to only set out to preach can take the joy out of the live experience. We want the message, but we want the story too, with all its glorious theatrical invention. This year's REP shows will meet those expectations.

New opportunities for young technical theatre talent, who put the show in show business and make live theatre the unique unmissable experience that we all love, is another reason to be cheerful. For the first time this year we're supporting training opportunities and bursaries for two early career designers as part of our free REP initiative, giving them the chance to learn from some of the best and get their own design gig in our new award-winning Workshop Theatre. The need to nurture technical theatre talent is greater than ever with a growing skills gap and we've got a big national backstage programme with a very exciting partner up our sleeves that'll be launching soon.

Finally, a recent breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology saw more energy come out than what was put in during an experiment in a California laboratory. Guess what we've been doing that for years. This is what art does. The alchemy of ideas and investment pays back in the most rewarding and energetic ways. It's a gift, and one we should all be optimistic about.

Click here for more information about National Youth Theatre.

Much Ado About Nothing is at the Duke of York's Theatre from 7 - 10 February

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