Making theatre with young people is so much more than child’s play

Written for The Stage, January 2025

Leading a youth theatre is one of the most challenging jobs in theatre.

The minute you walk in the door, you stop being just a director or facilitator, and almost instantly become a youth worker, mentor, coach, agony aunt, support worker, academic advisor, parent liaison officer, advocate … and sometimes a DJ, a dance captain and a cheerleader too.

It’s not a choice to take these things on. It’s part and parcel of the work, especially when the work you’re making is closely entwined with the lives of the young people you’re working with.

The more you lead, the more you really understand your responsibilities. Health and safety. Safeguarding. Equity. Mental Health Support. Again, these aren’t add-ons. They’re essential, because to lead any work with young people involves a significant amount of risk - you’re looking after other people’s children, after all.

So, it is not for nothing that I think making theatre with young people is some of the most complex work you can do in theatre. It is a deep-seated, finely honed craft that is rarely appreciated as such, including, sometimes, by the people who do it.

Early last year, we started work on the Youth Theatre Census - a survey of youth theatres created, distributed and supported by a big coalition of local and national organisations who care about youth theatre. It was a chance to better understand and recognise youth theatre and the people who participate in it - and understand how we can better support the people who lead it.

More than 400 youth theatre leaders took time out to fill it in and, thanks to their insights, we now know how much they need that support.

Youth theatre has changed. It is no longer just a place to polish up your acting skills and perform in a play (though it still does that too). It is now a place of self-expression and artistic exploration. Somewhere for young people to participate in devising, dance, film, puppetry, writing, digital and technical theatre workshops, go on theatre visits and residential and receive personal, academic and mental health support.

In a country where youth services have been cut and the arts marginalised in schools, youth theatre has become a crucial force for young people, their communities and the theatre industry.

This is incredible, because so many youth theatres do it with little or no money. Around a third operate on less than £10,000 a year. Many are wholly reliant on volunteers. A big proportion are reliant on a single source of income - mainly fees paid by young people. Some have no income at all.

I know of youth theatre leaders who use their own money to enter the young people they work into LAMDA exams. Who’ve had to cancel shows they’ve been rehearsing for months because a venue suddenly changes their hire fees. Or who have worked for twenty years and never been able to afford to go on a training course.

It is extraordinary that so many people give so much time and energy keeping youth theatres going. We need to celebrate their dedication, but also recognise that it is not sustainable, equitable or safe for this important national activity to rely so heavily on an unsupported and unpaid workforce.

I ran a youth theatre for fifteen years and I lost a lot of sleep while doing so. Every day I worried whether someone would hurt themselves in a workshop, or get attacked, or be at risk at home. I worried about specific young people going through incredibly challenging situations. I worried about logistics, legalities, access and equity. Sometimes I even found time to worry about the play we were all making.

None of these things were optional. If young people don’t feel safe in a space, you can’t make plays with them. If they’re having trouble in their lives, you can’t just ignore them. If a youth club shuts down, you have to shift your workshops to allow a bit more space for everyone to socialise and catch up.

I was able to do them because I was supported - by colleagues and board members. We had policies, risk assessments, partnerships and plans. We kept up with best practice. All of these things came because we had funding, connection with other youth theatres, and support - crucial in helping us do what we all came to do in the first place - make plays with young people that change them, and us, and the world.

If we’re serious about youth theatre, we need to be serious about creating those structures for everyone. Not to impose things that aren’t useful on people whose passion and dedication has made something beautiful and unique in their own community, but to support them to do it more richly, sustainably and safely - in their own way.

Putting money into youth theatre is an investment. It will help make youth theatres better at what they do, more accessible to more young people, more connected to each other and more impactful.

It will help young people. It will help artists. It will help communities. And it will help the theatre industry - because where else are we going to find the diverse, representative and transformative generation of future professionals that we know we so badly need?

Our census lays bare the things many of us have known for a long time. It is now on all of us to use these findings to build something new - a national strategy for youth theatre in England, with a primary focus on those young companies who are struggling most on a day to day basis.

In order to do that we need a new coalition of youth theatres and other stakeholders to take this work forward. I’m ready to play my part in building that. Youth theatre, in all its wonderful complexity and craft, deserves all the support it can get.