A Message from the Director

It has been my pleasure to run KYT for 8 years now, and it fills me with great pride to see what has been achieved by everyone in that time. We have developed from a group with about 60-80 members to one with over 200!

This growth has been down to two things; hard work and quality, both of which are words that we take very seriously at KYT. The hard work comes in the meticulous planning of each session to ensure that every child gets something from it; it comes in the amount of man hours and effort that is put in behind the scenes to ensure that KYT productions are staged with the same amount of technical facilities that a fully professional production would receive.

The quality comes out clearly in what is produced by the children that attend KYT. We have received no end of 5 star reviews for our productions, and every time we stage a new one, we challenge ourselves to raise the bar even higher, we never rest on our laurels, because with each new child comes a new challenge, and we are constantly developing and learning ourselves to enable us to keep in touch with young minds.

I used the word “professional” earlier and that is what sets KYT aside from most groups of its kind. All of our staff have worked professionally in the ‘business’ and continue to; our Stage Management and Design teams are not students, they are the same people that work on every professional show that passes through the Key Theatre.

Let’s be very clear – we will not claim that we will make every child good enough for a career in showbusiness. We will not use words like ‘agency’ and ‘professional auditions’ to try and get you to choose KYT. No one can promise these things. What we will promise is that every child that comes to us will grow as a person, they will be more confident, more outgoing, and above all we hope to make them better people. We take our responsibility towards the young people very seriously, we invest in them. This is why we have members that left 5, 10 and even 15 years ago that still keep in touch, they still want to share with us what they are doing. And it doesn’t matter if that isn’t an acting career! Acting is a hard job that’s not right for everyone. We are as proud of our members that have gone on to become teachers, journalists, psychologists, scientists and every other job imaginable, as we are of the ones that have a forged a career in the performing arts.

And what about those that have done that? Ex KYT members have performed all over the world, on stage and screen and of course, London’s West End. We could list them but it would take too long. Have a look at our alumni page for a few examples and read what some of them have said about KYT.

We have loads of exciting things happening over the next year such as KYT kids in Panto at the Key, our National Theatre Connections play ‘Journey To X’, Easter Drama Workshop, Summer School and Summer Musical. Details of some of these things are already on the website, others will appear when available. The next twelve months also sees KYT enter into its 21st year…we must be doing something right!

Paul Collings