Youth workers

Kevin Dyer, Action Transport’s first Associate Writer, explains how the company develops new work for, by and with children and young people.

For 19 years Action Transport has been producing quality touring productions for children and young people. New writing has been central to the best work of the Company.  

It now only produces new work. And at its heart are creative relationships with professional writers.

The company has finished an extensive, four-year restructuring programme, and the door is now open; we’re looking for new ideas for new plays.

We commission professional writers to write plays. We also work with many fired-up young writers who have something to say. What is happening more and more in the company is the connection of these two strands. We are no longer simply ‘delivering’ drama to young people. We have a wider, deeper writing belief.

We make plays for, by and with young people – (sometimes all at once) and this mix of professional and young writers is key to the company’s success. We connect the two in order to embed the experience of young people in our commissioned touring work. We also know that working with young writers benefits the professional writers who do it. And, at the same time, we are creating a new generation of writers with the special skills required to write children’s drama.

An example of this is my play The Bomb: the first people to read it weren’t the folk who were going to produce it, but a small group from Action Transport Writers who are just beginning to write their own plays, are doing GCSEs and A levels and who are the same age and ‘voice’ as the young woman in my play. Invaluable.

(If any body else would like to read the first draft and give me their thoughts on it, by the way, I’d be much obliged.)

Increasingly, we integrate more experienced and new writers on the same project. Action Transport Writers, for example, is a selected group of writers with a mix of abilities and experience. It includes writers who have had work produced on radio 4, creative-writing graduates, and younger writers still at school. We work together on how to write better - and the company supports them on their individual projects.

Spike

We make lots of plays in many ways. But every play has a writer (or writers - Leather Boy which played at Chester Gateway had 17.) The next production, Spike, has grown from an idea from a young writer in the company’s youth theatre and has also been written by many hands.  

My job is to mentor professional and young writers; imagine, develop and lead writing projects; and to keep new writing at the heart of the company. We run open access sessions, ‘master classes’ and also sessions examining the writing and creation of all our made work  - usually to invited writers.

We also create original work with our sister company, Vulavulani, a breathtaking children’s theatre company in Soweto. We combine our (story and structure) strengths with their particular ability to create and shape material. Not so much a nice cultural exchange but a direct fusion of alternative play-creating skills.

Earlier this year Joe Sumsion (AD of Action Transport) and myself went to Soweto and began the development of our next joint venture, Gogo – a play about two urban Soweto kids who are dumped on their grandma (Gogo) by a dad who can’t cope. The play will tour nationally in the UK and in South Africa.

In 2006 we are co-hosting The Lockpickers’ Ball with the Unity Theatre, Liverpool. This is a festival revealing the secrets of writing outstanding plays for, by and with young people. It will show the work of 7 companies, and be a forum for the critical analysis of the methods of making quality work for children. It will bring together leading theatre makers/writers/authors to share their processes.  It will act as a focus for young writers, and a place where the country’s best dramatists for children can meet. If you want further details contact: writing@actiontransporttheatre.co.uk

The company reads plays written for young people too, and we work very hard to respond critically, intelligently and honestly.

At Action Transport, some of our work goes to theatres (national touring sometimes) and some tours school halls. Schools are difficult venues, but we believe precious theatrical experiences happen in transformed school halls. This is where children have life-changing experiences at the hands of a theatre co.  

 ‘There are companies all over the UK striving to make great drama for children, and the very best writers are needed to raise the status of the work. Each has its own angle, mission, passion. Writers trying to crack the ‘young persons market’ need to look closely at websites and see companies’ work.

This article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Autumn 2005).