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Tristan Bates Theatre Box Office 020 7240 6283 |
Youth Music Theatre UK
The Dummy Tree
New Music Theatre by Conor Mitchell
24th August - 4th September
Tuesday - Saturday, 7:30pm
Saturday Matinees at 4pm
Prices: £10 / £20 YMT Friends seats (includes £10 donation)
(The Friends rate includes a £10 donation to Youth Music Theatre UK to enable us to continue our work commissioning and developing new musical theatre. If you are a UK taxpayer we would be grateful if you could confirm your wish to make the donation subject to Gift Aid.)
020 7240 6283 / boxoffice@tristanbatestheatre.co.uk
Written by Conor Mitchell
Directed by Stuart Harvey
Musical Direction by Chris Huntley
Cast
Ben Boskovic
Richard Hodgson
Kayleigh McKnight
Katie Spencer
Emma Tansley
Rebecca Turner
Michael Wells
A young man, on the day of his wedding, stands under a dummy tree festooned with dummies, cigarette packets, old gin bottles and all the other things that people want to give up. He agonises over the biggest decision of his life. The wedding guests wait. Next to the tree sits a young girl with her baby in a pram. She writes a letter. She too struggles to make a decision which will affect her and her child for years to come.
The Dummy Tree is a powerful and ultimately uplifting story about the many problems that affect young people and young parents. A young girl has to decide whether to give up her new born baby for adoption. A young man has to decide whether he can accept the responsibilities of married life before he has come to understand his own past. The two are closer than they think…
Written by one the country’s leading musical theatre composers, The Dummy Tree was commissioned by the National Theatre, Connections and was workshopped by director Phyllida Lloyd with young people from Youth Music Theatre UK . It is now presented in a new production by Youth Music Theatre UK, the country’s leading musical theatre company for young people.
About the Writer
Conor Mitchell, from Lurgan Northern Ireland, has written more than 40 works including, for YMT, Goblin Market, Missing Mel, The Time of Our Freedom and for other companies, The Young Pornographer’s Wife, The Musician, Merry Christmas Betty Ford, Diary of a Madman, Todd, Letters to an Absent Other and Mathilde. He won Best Score, New York Musical Theatre Festival, 2006 and is the only writer winner to be awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for musical theatre composition. He has written for the Ulster Youth Orchestra, been writer on attachment to the National Theatre Studio, writer in residence at LAMDA and music advisor to Youth Music Theatre UK. He is under commission from Ransom Theatre Company, Library Theatre Manchester, LAMDA, University of Gotenberg, Nice People Theatre Company Philadelphia and Cahoots NI at present. He is also writing a one man show, Cycle of Trifles for Nigel Richards. He is 31.
About Youth Music Theatre
Youth Music Theatre UK (YMT) is the UK's biggest provider of musical theatre projects for young people. Every year it auditions young people up to the age of 21 for roles in eight productions as well as delivering a substantial programme of outreach work. Its graduates go on to professional careers in the theatre, music and other creative industries (three in the recent West End production of Spring Awakening and three in BBC TV’s Over the Rainbow). Its back catalogue of newly commissioned work will be published online in 2010 making it available to other groups both amateur and professional. Much of YMT’s work involves young people creating, developing and devising work themselves, supported by professional directors, choreographers and musical directors, and it also now commissions and creates more new musical theatre work in the UK every year than any other organisation. www.youthmusictheatreuk.org
