‘Want a Mint? …Extra Strong’ was the title of Barrow Youth Theatre’s production at Forum 28 in February 1992.
The Mail’s reviewer said the group had put together a fine team performance and highlighted Phillip Gregg and Dom Greaves for showing ‘an excellent flair for comedy’.
Later that year the group ran a series of Easter workshops, with sessions for 13- to 19-year-olds and adults.
They included sessions on rhythmic work and lyrics, masks, improvisation and ways to approach creating a character from scratch.
Barrow Youth Theatre celebrated five years with a new show at Forum 28 in 1997.
Little Nippers was a show that group members had devised themselves after working on drama sketches about their earliest memories.
The play was about father Mr Easterbrook, played by Ben Montague, and his five-year-old son Max (Barry Voy). They go for a walk and get into an hilarious adventure with, among others, a crab (played by six-year-old Keir Rathbone), a runaway ice cream van (played by Richard Poole) and Mr and Mrs Chips from the chip shop (Emma Barker and Laura Barker).
Cast members were mostly 12 to 15 years old.
Five years later, in 2002, the theatre group celebrated a decade of working in the Barrow area, teaching theatre skills, design and writing.
The group could look back on many successful productions, including The Street, Eric the Viking and Clockwork.
The group, said The Mail, was founded by professional director Rachel Ashton and Julie Hammerton, who in 2002 was artistic director of the Barracudas Carnival Band and producer for Shoreline Films.
During the company’s ten years young people in Barrow had had the opportunity to work with many award-winning professionals, including Stephen Warbeck, who won an Oscar for the film music for Shakespeare in Love and Julian Crouch, who had won awards for his theatre design.
The celebration show featured six new plays, mostly written or devised by the members, and performed over two nights at Forum 28.
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