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How Bristol Old Vic Young Company transforms young lives
“I was always the naughty kid at school,” Julia Head told a packed room at the Bristol Old Vic the other day.
Julia’s first experience of theatre was on a school trip to the Old Vic to watch Sally Cookson’s Jane Eyre. She was “determined not to enjoy” the show, she explained.
But then something changed.
is needed now More than ever
Sitting on the steps of the upper circle, having refused to remain in her seat, Julia quickly became immersed in the performance.
“It made my bones feel alive and hair stand on end,” she said. “Watching Jane Eyre completely changed the trajectory of my life and I felt as if a new part of my brain had opened up.”
Julia joined the Bristol Old Vic Young Company soon afterwards. Celebrating its 25th birthday this year, the Young Company aims to help young people in developing creative ideas, building self-confidence, allowing them to work with professionals and workshop leaders to create their own productions.
Now a director in her own right, Julia shared her experience a couple of days after all 350 members of the Young Company took to the Old Vic’s Weston Studio stage as part of Springboard, with 17 back-to-back shows.
But the Young Company is much more than the historic King Street theatre it calls home. (In fact, it was the Young Company carrying on as the building was mothballed that allows the Old Vic to call itself the oldest continuously working theatre in the English speaking world.)
The Young Company’s satellite projects across Bristol aim to connect with young people who find it difficult to participate in arts activity, developing deeper engagement with local communities in all four corners of the city.
One such engagement success story is Joe Langdon, who was ten months into an 18-month prison sentence when he first came into contact with the Bristol Old Vic.
Joe grew up in south London “surrounded by gangs, weapons and violence”, and had ended up in a young offenders institute at the age of 16.
Confident and eloquent, Joe explained how Jesse Jones, then working for Bristol Old Vic’s outreach department, taught drama every Monday at the prison.
“Jesse saw my GCSEs and realised that drama was something that I was good at,” Joe said. “He asked me whether I wanted to start coming to a drama group at the Old Vic and I was like, ‘Yeah, alright, why not?’”
Joe Langdon was ten months into an 18-month prison sentence when he first came into contact with the Bristol Old Vic
“I was coming to the end of my sentence,” Joe told Bristol 24/7. “Jesse sat me down and said that I had a choice.”
He could go back to south London, move back in with his mum and find himself in the same destructive situation as before. Or he could move to Bristol and join the Young Company with 12 other collaborators.
Joe decided to relocate to the West Country and is now in his final year as a student at Mountview, one of the UK’s leading drama schools.
“You have to shroud yourself in a persona where I come from,” Joe told Bristol24/7. “Theatre and performance helped break down this fake personality I had created and embrace who I really was.”
Read more: Acts of Resistance at Bristol Old Vic
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