Personal & Placement Context

In this journal I will reflect on my experiences at Leeds Playhouse Youth Theatre (LPHYT) – a 120 strong youth theatre which offers weekly sessions for young people aged between 8-21. These reflections will also be informed by an interview I conducted with Eleanor Manners – Eleanor was previously Youth Theatre Director at Leeds Playhouse and is now Artistic Director at Theatre Centre, a company which makes touring shows for teenage audiences and places young people at the center of their development process.  

I have spent the last decade working with young people in both the creative industries and the education sector. Because working with young people has been such a core part of my professional life, I have always taken it for granted that youth theatre is a vital part of the theatre eco-system. However, the value of participatory work is not as intuitive to everyone in the industry: “Those working in theatre often talk evangelically about the potential for theatre to create societal change. Yet the same people also often view their community work as somehow being less valuable than their main-stage hit.” (Garnder, L. 2023). During my time on this course, when interacting with a range of artists who do not necessarily come from a participatory background, I have found myself in positions where I feel the need to justify why I choose to work with young people.  

My work requires a high level or artistic and pastoral skill but at times I have felt like that is not recognised by others in the industry. In an article for The Stage Ned Glasier (ex-Artistic Director of Company Three) said: “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 which is rarely appreciated as such,” (Glasier, N. 2025). This thinking led me to my line of enquiry. What does excellent youth theatre practice look like and why do we need it? Answering this question would not only equip me to advocate for this work to others in the industry but would also allow me to hone and focus how I approach my work with young people in my future professional practice.  

A note on safeguarding: The nature of my placements means that many of the events I will be reflecting on involve young people. For the purposes of safeguarding, I have anonymized the young people involved and cannot include video or photo evidence from my placements. I will instead reflect generally on my experiences in a way that doesn’t identify individual young people.  

What is youth theatre anyway?

Youth Theatre is an umbrella term which encompasses a wide range of organisations of varying scales. Until recently, there was little data on what the Youth Theatre landscape looked like in England. There is no central body which governs Youth Theatre provision. The National Association of Youth Theatres (NAYT) serves as a network between Youth Theatres and practitioners; however, it is made up of fee-paying members (NAYT, 2026). Many youth theatres operate on tight financial margins (Stevenson, 2024), so we can assume that the fees required to be a member of NAYT will be a barrier to some youth theatres being represented.  

The most comprehensive data we have around the current scale of youth theatre provision in England is The Youth Theatre Census (Stevenson, 2024). 387 youth theatres completed the survey in full, however it is fair to assume that this is still not a comprehensive collection of Youth Theatre’s in the U.K. One limitation in the report is that less than 1% of respondents were part of franchises (organisations like Stagecoach, PQA & Razzmatazz). Under the Stagecoach umbrella alone, there are over 300 franchises (Stagecoach, 2025) so clearly this is a gap in representation within the survey.  

Youth Theatre’s who responded to the survey generally fit into the following models:  

Leeds Playhouse Youth Theatre is one of the 40% of youth theatres who are part of a larger organisation – their income is generated by membership fees, with some subsidy from the wider income of the organisation (most of this subsidisation is used for salaries of permanent staff). In some ways, this puts LPHYT in a privileged position. It has a robust infrastructure around it to support administration and processes. It also has access to industry standard performances spaces and support from a professional production department.  

However, there is also a precarity to being part of a larger organisation. In the current financial climate, when funding is becoming increasingly more competitive (Luckhurst, G. 2024) and theatres are having to make difficult choices about where limited funds are allocated, it is more important than ever that youth theatre practitioners are able to communicate clearly and precisely the importance and impact of this work. Youth Theatre can sometimes be seen as additional to the central function of producing theatre organisations, and therefore may not remain a priority when not everything can be funded.  

Within this context, I am going to reflect on three experiences I have had while engaging with youth theatre across the last 6 months, with a hope to identify the moments of crystalisation where the importance of this work felt clear and identify patterns.  

Reflection 1: Licie…is this devised?

One of the tasks I undertook with Leeds Playhouse was accompanying a group of young people to watch The Last Supper (MEXA, 2025). The show was being performed at Leeds Playhouse as part of Transform Festival. It was created by MEXA, a collective of artists formed in 2015 in Sao Paolo “born in the context of homeless shelters” (Pipa Prize, 2025). They make work about transience, gender and queerness from a place of lived experience. Many of the artists come from “very precarious backgrounds” (Meng, K. 2025).  

The show was an example of participatory theatre in its purest form. Following the methodologies of Boal (1979) the makers of the theatre were the very people affected by the issues being explored, but additionally the show brought into play Boal’s idea of rejecting the role of a “spectator” in theatre, inviting the audience on stage to share the eponymous Last Supper making each audience member “a subject, an actor on an equal plane with those generally accepted as actors.” (Boal, 1979, p135).  

The majority of the young people I was accompanying had not seen a piece of theatre like this before. This was clear from the uncertainty on their faces as we entered the auditorium to see the stage populated by the cast, making insistent eye contact with audience members as they entered. They seemed unsure about a theatrical experience where they would be asked to connect directly with the performers, rather than watching from safely behind the fourth wall. The teenage defences went up as they prepared themselves for all the ways they would dislike this piece of theatre.   

Slowly, over the course of the performance, uncertainty gave way to joy. This was for a number of reasons. Firstly, even the most cynical of teenagers would struggle not to enjoy a piece of theatre which involved performers competing to be “the best Judas” complete with one performer emerging from a cake to lip-sync to a Mariah Carey track. Secondly, there was a sense of recognition which rippled through the group. This might not have been like any theatre they had seen before, but it was certainly like theatre they had made. The moment of recognition hit particularly clearly for one young person, who turned to me mid-show to whisper “Licie…is this devised?” with a sense of sudden realisation. By the time we were invited onto the stage at the end of the play to share a huge 10 metre long cake with the rest of the audience, the joy had reached fever pitch.  

The experience of watching The Last Supper blew apart those young people’s ideas of what theatre could be. I had experienced their hesitance about being part of devised performances before – there was often a feeling that non-narrative devised pieces were just something we did at youth theatre, that perhaps it wasn’t real theatre. In watching The Last Supper, the young people could see themselves in the performers, could understand themselves as artists and theatre-makers, no different to the people they were watching on stage.  

In an article for The Stage, Jenny Sealey (Artistic Director of Graeae) talks about the importance of youth theatre in equipping young people with tools to process the difficulties they face, saying: “Our teenagers need support and a space to voice what it is like being them at this moment in time – and what better way to do that than to give them a creative space.” (Sealey, J. 2022). While watching The Last Supper, the young people saw the power of being able to use theatre as a platform to tell an audience who might not understand or listen to you in another setting, exactly what you are experiencing and why it is important. Through this, they understood the voice and the power theatre-making could give them.  

Another crucial factor in the impact seeing this show had on those young people was the fact that they were given permission to respond to the piece however they wanted. We spoke in sessions before and after the trip about the fact that this piece would be different to other shows they had seen before – that it was okay to like it or hate it – that being able to talk about how a piece of theatre makes you feel, positive or negative, is a useful skill.  

In formal education, there is often pressure on young people to engage with things like literature and theatre in a way that is correct.  Research from the National Literacy Trust found that “A packed curriculum, high academic expectations and the perception of a challenging future may all contribute to children having less time for reading for enjoyment and less mental space to do it” (National Literacy Trust, 2024). Youth Theatre offers a vital space where young people can engage with stories and storytelling in a less formal setting which gives them space to recognise their opinions and preferences, without the pressure to respond in a way that is correct.   

Reflection 2: No wrong answers

Following the visit to watch The Last Supper I worked with some of the same young people on a response piece to Headlong’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The piece would be performed on the set of the Headlong production and would be devised by the participants in response to the themes of the show.  

I knew that there would be a mixture of responses to exploring Shakespeare in a youth theatre session. Talking about his own opinions of Shakespeare, Artistic Director of Silhouette Youth Theatre Leigh Wolmarans said, “the language was difficult to get a hand on; the plot was too complex” (Wolmarans, L. 2022). This was certainly a view shared by the young people I was working with.   

I knew a broad understanding of the plot would be useful but was aware listening to me recite a plot synopsis would not make for a fun and engaging youth theatre session. Instead, I decided to get things on their feet. I assigned each member of the group a character from the play and started talking through the plot of the play – each time someone’s character was mentioned they had to jump into the middle of the circle and improvise the events I was recounting. Somehow it stuck – recounting the plot in low stakes way the young people could understand, and giving them an additional task to keep their focus, meant that by the end they could recall the main events of the play, and were starting to build a picture of the various characters.  

We were ready to tackle the text. We spent most of the next two sessions sat around a table reading and chatting. As we did, there was another one of those lightbulb moments of realisation. As we reached Helena’s “Lo, she is one of this confederacy” (Shakespeare, W. 1967, 3.3:192) speech one of the young people remarked on the amount of time Helena spent talking about Hermia, rather than either of the men involved in the complex tangle of lovers. This gave way to an enthusiastic discussion about the exact nature of Helena & Hermia’s relationship.  

Many academics have used far more words that I have to spare in these reflections examining just how queer Shakespeare’s plays are and what that might mean about the writer himself, but as Will Tosh says “treating Shakespeare’s sexuality like some kind of cold case awaiting investigation misses the point.” (Tosh, W. 2024, p5). Whether the observation about Helena and Hermia was correct wasn’t important – what was important was that youth theatre was offering a space where a young person could take risks in critical thinking and understanding of storytelling and dramaturgy. It was also, again, giving them a space where they could develop their artistic opinions, without the pressure to have the right opinion.  

This felt like a conversation which needed the informal setting of youth theatre to happen; “How many of us, reading Shakespeare at school, were given the chance to explore the queer relationship of Sebastian and Atonio (Twelfth Night) […] How often were we encouraged – or even allowed – to think about the queer dynamics between Romeo and Mercutio (Romeo & Juliet) […] or Helena and Hermia (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)” (Tosh, W. 2024, p2). I wondered whether this young person would have taken the risk to question this idea, or form an opinion about this text so confidently in a school setting, where the pressure to get it right, and the awareness of being assessed and measured is constantly hanging over young people’s heads.  

This experience, coupled with the experience watching The Last Supper, led me to realise the unique opportunity provision like youth theatre offers young people. I was reminded of Mariani’s (1997) framework for scaffolding. Mariani talks about the need for high challenge and high support to enable effective learning, using the model in figure 2.  

The young people I was working with spent most of their time in school. The high challenge is certainly present in those settings with a constant push to raise expectations of young people. The head of school’s inspectorate Ofsted said, at a conference recently that he “would never acquiesce to the curse of low expectations.” (Chantler-Hicks, L. 2026) Schools are ranked against each other annually. This creates intense competition, with schools hoping to gain the best results to attract more students. This is perpetuated by the fact that schools are funded by a per pupil model (Department for Education, 2024). Research has found that “schools that face greater competition are more likely to adopt teaching methods which, although academically effective, are not necessarily inspiring or enjoyable.” (Santry, C. 2018). All of these issues are made more prescient by the introduction of mechanisms like the ebacc and progress 8 measures, which push young people away from studying creative subjects in school (Department for Education, 2026) meaning that opportunities for young people to engage with drama in schools are disappearing, in favour of boosting attainment statistics in traditionally academic subjects. In the context of all this, the challenge is high, but where is the support?  

Challenge is an important factor; it moves students into the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygostsky, 1978) and facilitates their learning. However, without support, the cost of taking risks, or trying something new and failing becomes too high. It makes it difficult for young people to access the growth mindset (Dweck, C. 2016) needed for progression.  

High challenge, high support practice is something youth theatre is uniquely placed to offer to young people. Making theatre is challenging. Understanding stories and dramaturgy is challenging. We have the opportunity to introduce young people to shows and texts which challenge and expand their understanding of themselves and the world around them. Crucially though, there is no exam hanging over young people’s heads at youth theatre. They feel safe to offer ideas and take creative risks. Of course as the ‘more knowledgeable other’ (Vygotsky, 1978) we might offer provocations to extend or guide participants’ thinking but no one is going to give them a number grade which will have to stay on their CV into adulthood and determine what opportunities are available to them in a year’s time.  

In a blog post, Ned Glasier draws comparisons between youth theatre and adventure play, referring specifically to an adventure playground called The Land. He describes it as “A world which runs on joy, play, risk, and bits of old rubbish which takes on new meaning in muddy hands” (Glasier, N. 2022). The post talks about the need for a similar physical space for youth theatre, where young people have the freedom to take whatever risk they like “and the adults are helping them do it. That’s not something we see every day.” (Glasier, N. 2022). I don’t know of a youth theatre that has been successful in creating that as a physical space, maybe there is one somewhere – I hope so. However, in the practice I have observed and been part of, facilitators and directors are creating versions of that space for creative risk all the time.  

Youth Theatre creates a space for young people to take risks and test out their ideas with the support of knowledgeable adults and the comfort of knowing that they can’t pass or fail.  When we give young people an opportunity like that, their creativity, confidence and sense of self go from strength to strength. There is, however, something waiting at the end of term – an event where young people may well sink or swim – the performance. How do we make sure we keep a ‘high support, high challenge’ ethos once young people get onto the stage. 

Reflection 3: Left to their own devices

After weeks of responding to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, taking creative risks and solidifying opinions, the final piece was cobbled together in a frenzied week of intensive rehearsals over February half term. One of the things about working with young people is that there is never enough time. When I spoke to Eleanor Manners, she summed it up like this. “A standard rehearsal day is 8 hours. If you sit down and work out the hours, an entire term of youth theatre can equate to less than three full rehearsal days. It’s also difficult to build up the same momentum when you’re rehearsing in 2-hour blocks with a week off in between.” (Manners, E. 2026).  

This rehearsal process on fast forward means that often as you wrap the process up, you’re dealing with a bit of an unknown quantity. In the case of this response piece, the three other artists working on the project and I had been devising scenes independently with our different groups. In isolation, each group had made brilliant content which they were really proud of, and the task across the intensive week was to piece it together. The work the young people had devised included (but was not limited to):  

• A rave inspired movement sequence which captured the hedonism of the forest. 

• An examination of power structures through the metaphor of a restaurant, which culminated in a chillingly threatening tasting menu. 

• A deeply moving monologue about childhood dreams of being a ballerina. 

• The band.  

The band were members of the oldest youth theatre group. They had worked in a very autonomous way across the term, writing and rehearsing a song which they wanted to perform as part of the piece. It had been very participant lead – partly because none of the adult artists on the project were musicians.  

While good practice with young people champions those young people’s voices, the adult artist is a crucial element within the process. “To deny the existence of the adults in any participative process is a dangerous misrepresentation and an erasure of the craft that creating work with young people requires.” (Glasier, N & Greenaway-Bailey, S. 2021). Youth theatre is not just putting young people in a room and hoping they come up with something brilliant. The adult artists involved in the process shape the work through carefully planned prompts, and laser focused questioning. When it is working properly, youth theatre is one of the few spaces where young people and adults truly collaborate, equitably.  

That hadn’t happened here; we had made a mistake I’m often conscious of in my practice with young people. It is easy to look at a teenager, particularly a 17- or 18-year-old, and see a small adult. “Too often we engage with young people by squashing them into adult roles” (Glasier, N. & Greenaway-Bailey, S. 2021). The fact is that teenagers are not small adults. Their brains work completely differently. During adolescence “significant changes occur in the limbic system, which may impact self-control, decision making, emotions and risk-taking behaviours.” (Arain, M. et al, 2013). Because of a lack of expertise in the art form the group wanted to work in, the adult artists on the project hadn’t been able to give the same level of support as they could when working in the medium of theatre.  

Throughout the process, the band had done an impressive job of working together, but as is to be expected given what we know about the way teenagers’ brains work, there were some disputes which they struggled to resolve without adult support. This meant that work progressed slowly in the limited time available, and when we came to show week, the group felt underprepared. A suggestion was made that the song might be cut from the piece, however by this point some members of the group didn’t want to lose the opportunity to share what they had been working on. They presented a strong argument for the song’s inclusion, and so it stayed. However, it was clear that not all members of the group were confident in what they had made.  

This was a moment when the high support nature of youth theatre had broken down – and as a result perhaps some young people came away from that performance feeling like it was possible to get youth theatre wrong. The difficult thing about youth theatre when the support is not there and failure suddenly feels possible, is that the stakes for that failure can feel really high. If we as adult artists don’t provide the high level of support required, we can leave young people in a really exposing situation.  

What this experience taught me is that not only is high support needed, but it is needed at the right point in the process. The point of intervention for the band should have happened much earlier in the process. Rather than leaving the group to work autonomously and only realising the issues late in the process, the adult artists on that project had a responsibility to foresee the issues and prevent them. Perhaps there should have been a stronger structure put in place at the beginning of the devising process, to make sure that the ideas which got developed were ones which adults in the room had skills to support. This is something that I will carry into my professional practice going forward.  

Conclusions: Why do we need youth theatre?

Effective youth theatre practice offers a unique space where young people can take creative risks and be intellectually, creatively and personally challenged. When it is working well it is a space in which teenagers and adults truly collaborate – which not only benefits young people but benefits the adult artists working in this space by giving us reminders of the difficulty of the teenage experience which builds empathy and understanding. However, for youth theatre to achieve this, adult practitioners have a responsibility to provide high support and effective provocations to enable young people to develop their sense of self and creative voice.  

In the current cultural climate, where teenagers are often either dismissed as children or given the burden of being the generation who will fix the world’s problems, youth theatre creates a framework which encourages adults to truly listen to young people and give a platform to what they are actually saying. This is needed now more than ever, when other provisions for young people such as youth clubs are becoming increasingly rare.  

Youth theatre also future proofs our industry, helping to create a love of theatre which will turn the young people in our youth theatres today into the audiences and artists of tomorrow. This is particularly important when dwindling drama provision in schools means that other opportunities for interest in theatre to be ignited are disappearing. Artists often talk about the ability of theatre to change lives. We talk about how watching and making theatre builds empathy and give us the tools to change minds and process life’s difficult questions. When we ensure this is happening for young people at the very start of their development, the impact is massive.  

When reflecting on why we need youth theatre, I’m reminded of my conversation with Eleanor Manners. Eleanor has been working with young people in theatre for over a decade, and when I asked her why she has focused her career on work with, by and for young people she said “Within a youth theatre cohort, a small number of members will go on to be successful performers. Some of them might go on to work in other areas of theatre. Most of them will go on to be the theatre audiences of the future; these are amazing outcomes, but they’re not why I do this work. My hope is that all of the young people I have worked with will go on to be excellent future humans. That is why I do this work.” (Manners, E. 2026). This really resonated with me. As an artist the thing that drives me to make work is the hope that my work will foster empathy and curiosity in the people who see it. Youth Theatre practice is another tool for building empathy and curiosity. If the outcome of my career can be generations of excellent future humans, that feels like a job well done.   

References

About us (2026) Stagecoach Available at https://www.stagecoach.co.uk/about-us/ (Accessed 15.04.2026) 

Arain, M et al (2013) ‘Maturation of the adolescent brain’ Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, Volume 9 [online] Available at https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S39776 (Accessed 16.04.2026) 

Become a Member (2026) NAYT Available at https://www.nayt.org.uk/become-a-member (Accessed 15.04.2026)  

Boal, A. (1979) Theatre of the Oppressed London: Pluto Press 

Chantler-Hicks, L. (2026) ‘Fury as Ofsted digs in on ‘low expectations’ barb’ Schools Week [online] Available at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/fury-as-ofsted-digs-in-on-low-expectations-barb/ (Accessed 16.04.2026) 

Department for Education (2024) The national funding formulae for schools and high needs [online] Available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6900e831a6048928d3fc2b3e/2025-26_NFF_policy_document.pdf (Accessed 16.04.2026)  

Department for Education (2026) Every child achieving and thriving [online] Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/every-child-achieving-and-thriving/every-child-achieving-and-thriving-html-version (Accessed 16.04.2026) 

Dweck, C. (2016) ‘What having a ‘growth mindset’ actually means’ Harvard Business Review, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp. 2-5 

Gardner, L. (2023) ‘Speak up: youth theatre is vital in elevating the next generations voices’ The Stage [online] Available at https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/speak-up-youth-theatre-is-vital-in-elevating-the-next-generations-voices-lyn-gardner (Accessed 15.04.2026)  

Glasier, N. & Greenaway-Bailey, S. (2021) ‘It is vital that adults and young people join forces to create a better future’ The Stage [online] Available at https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/it-is-vital-that-adults-and-young-people-join-forces-to-create-a-better-future (Accessed 16.04.2026)  

Glasier, N. (2022) Adventure Play [online] Available at https://nedglasier.com/writing/2022/3/15/adventure-play (Accessed 16.04.2026) 

Glasier, N. (2025) ‘Making theatre with young people is so much more than child’s play’ The Stage [online] Available at https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/ned-glasier-making-theatre-with-young-people-is-so-much-more-than-childs-play-company-three-youth-theatre (Accessed 15.04.2026) 

Luckhurst, G. (2024) ‘Funding crisis: UK arts sector ‘running on empty’ compared to Europe’ The Stage [online] Available at https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/funding-crisis-uk-arts-sector-running-on-empty-compared-to-europe (Accessed 15.04.2026) 

Manners, E. 2026 Interview with the author, 6/04/2026 

Mariani, L. (1997) ‘Teacher support and teacher challenge in promoting learner autonomy’ Perspectives, a Journal of TESOL, Volume 23, Issue 2 [online] Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263860135_Teacher_Support_and_Teacher_Challenge_in_Promoting_Learner_Autonomy (Accessed 16.04.2026) 

Meng, K. (2025) ‘In conversation with: MEXA’ A Young(ish) Perspective [online] Available at https://ayoungishperspective.co.uk/2025/10/16/in-conversation-with-mexa/ (Accessed 15.04.2026) 

MEXA (2025) The Last Supper, Leeds: Leeds Playhouse, 25.10.25 

National Literacy Trust (2025) Children and young people’s reading in 2025 [online] Available at https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/children-and-young-peoples-reading-in-2025/ (Accessed 16.04.2026) 

Pipa Prize (2025) Grupo MEXA [online] Available at https://www.pipaprize.com/grupo-mexa/ (Accessed 15.04.2026)  

Santry, C. (2018) ‘School choice ‘leads to unhappy pupils’’ TES [online] Available at https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/school-choice-leads-unhappy-pupils (Accessed 16.04.2026)  

Sealey, J. (2022) ‘Theatremaking is a vital platform of protest for young people’ The Stage [online] Available at https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/theatremaking-is-a-vital-platform-of-protest-for-young-people (Accessed 16.04.2026) 

Shakespeare, W. (1967) A Midsummer Night’s Dream London: Penguin Classics 

Stevenson, R (2024) Youth Theatr Census 2024 [online] Available at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/510eec77e4b072208fa2d5e0/t/677c40dc7d0f2461025c3d9d/1736196318009/FINAL+INDEPENDENT+REPORT+Youth+Theatre+Census.pdf (Accessed 15.04.2026)

Tosh, W. (2024) Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare London: Spectre 

Vygotsky, L. 1978, Mind in Society, The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Harvard University Press  

Wolmarans, L. (2022) ‘Turning my opinion of Shakespeare around’ RSC Community Blog [online] Available at https://www.rsc.org.uk/blogs/royal-shakespeare-community-blog (Accessed 16.04.2026)