1st Chance Youth Theatre Company
The young people's experience in doing Cathedral Song (started through the life skills training at St. Basils) prompted them to rethink their career paths and with a little help from the Birmingham Rep apprentice schemes and support from St Basils they had been given their first chance to set up their own youth theatre company.
About 12 months ago the Birmingham Rep’s Learning and Participation Projects Manager Juliete Raynsford, was asked to assist in a community play created by a group of 16-25 yr olds from St Basils as part of their Life Skills course. This play was called Cathedral Song which went on to be developed into a piece of musical theatre to be performed at both The Birmingham Rep and St Martins Church in Birmingham City Centre. This was then also adapted for a radio play on the BBC. Cathedral Song was so very successful that it led two members of the group Vicki and Pamelia to take decisive action. They both decided they wanted to start up their own project as this project finished.
They felt they had so much more to give in the field of performing arts. Vicki Roberts and Pamelia Williams used their experience from this community project at the Birmingham Rep to re-create a first chance for others like themselves.
They began writing proposals and scheduling meetings with senior management at St Basils to establish what financial backing would be required to start up the '1st Chance Youth Theatre Company'. They completed their first production, 'Face The Music' which sold out at the Birmingham Rep on December 18th 2007.
This was all carried out through the education apprenticeship which is funded for 18mths. The apprenticeship is structured to cover every aspect of theatre such as understanding how a professional theatre is run, from a business and artistic perspective.
The young women are aiming for 1st Chance to be a source of all around knowledge for everyone who wants to get involved in theatre.
Their aim for 1st Chance is to help young people gain skills such as confidence, team building, and a sense of motivation. To experience being involved in something that requires a sense of fulfilling aims and achieving goals and much more. They also want to strengthen goals people may have in performing arts whether they sing, dance, write poems or songs, produce music, design costumes, enjoy directing and so on. They provide a social network to put on productions and enjoy what they do at the same time.
They create a type of theatre that combines art form and provokes debate, and it is very entertaining.
