The workshop was supported by theatre director Abdul Shayek and playwright Othniel Smith, who are putting together a script entitled This Whole Guns Knives Gangs Thing. With all the interviews that they have already carried out, you may wonder why they actually needed young people like those from Arts Beat youth theatre. But they needed feedback from young people on what they thought of the issue as a whole and how they would like to have or see it staged.
The overall workshop included games, a debate, practical exercises, which included acting out part of the text and verbatim-like introductions. Yes, verbatim! It is not commonly used word, but you might have heard of it. It mainly relates to theatre and is often when a play is based on interviews of people from real life events, so a performance may actually have the play set word for word with the characteristics of the interviewee. Feels like a lot to take in, but in simpler terms, the play is like a documentary but on stage. So Shayek and the rest of YPPT thought that they could have it in this form.
Tara Arts Beat members who were present seemed to enjoy the workshop and would have loved for it to be longer. However, Shayek mentioned that even though the project was ending, there will still be workshops run for young people in East London under Youth of Creative Arts (YOCA). YOCA runs workshops for young people 7 -17 years in the hope of the workshops will not just get them to do something and keeping them busy, but for them to understand what theatre is about and how they can use it to express their own ideas and thoughts.
You can check out their website www.youthofcreativearts.co.uk
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