The development of OPTIMISM, the new show from Dundee Rep Young Company, is a case study in the very subject of the play’s title.
The Rep’s associate directors Jess Thorpe and Tashi Gore began working at the theatre just a few days before the first lockdown began.
Now, after two years of preparation and online work, they’re finally getting to put some work onstage with the theatre’s young creators.
“It’s about collaboration, community and expressing yourself,” says Thorpe of the show, whose all-capital format is intentional.
The Young Company
“It’s having a dialogue with others, sharing how you feel about the world and articulating yourself.
“At no point during the pandemic have we stopped working online, then since September we’ve been back in the building. What we do is designed to platform and amplify the voices of our community – to give them an outlet and a place to express themselves.”
The Young Company are a group of 21 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 19, from schools and colleges across Dundee and some from as far as Arbroath.
They’re just a few of the 300 people who attend the building every week for theatre and dance classes, from a seven-week-old baby to a woman in her 90s.
“They’re absolutely incredible performers,” says Thorpe of the young company. “They’re being themselves and there’s nothing about that which isn’t joyful.
“Even though part of what we’ve worked on says we’ve got some work to do as a society, as a world, and we need to do it on behalf of the young – at the same time, it’s quite uplifting to see 21 young people just being loud and proud on the stage.”
Started with a question
Before Dundee, Thorpe and Gore ran the Junction 25 youth theatre company and in 2019 they co-wrote the educational A Beginner’s Guide to Devising Theatre book, both of which won awards.
They’ve used the same devising method with the Young Company here – essentially working with the performers to help them create their own show.
“We started with the question, what do you want to make a piece of theatre about?” says Thorpe. “What feels important to young people today? What’s on your mind? What feels like the driving force for this piece of theatre?
“Overwhelmingly it felt like a lot of themes were to do with feeling uncertain about the future, feeling anxious coming out of a pandemic. Young people today have a lot of information about things going on around them in the world all the time, particularly to do with climate change.
“So we used the weekly rehearsals to lean into the question, ‘how do you feel about the future?’, and to creatively explore their response to that.
“OPTIMISM is a show which explores young people’s version of the world today from Dundee, and also a forward projection of how they can feel hopeful about the future. I’d call it a collage of the young people’s voices. There’s a journey, but it’s not fiction.
“It’s absolutely the young people playing themselves, and having a conversation about what it feels like to be them at this point.
“Bits are quite political, about how things play out in front of them on social media and questions they want to ask.
“It’s designed to be a call to action, and we want to get young audiences excited about theatre, to feel they can see themselves represented on stage and things happening in the theatre that move and challenge them.”
An hour-long, joyful work
Alongside the important message, Thorpe says the hour-long piece is joyful and filled with youthful energy, using technology like their phones and TikTok to project aspects of the show to the audience.
“We’re playing with this idea of the live versus the digital, of being on your own with your phone versus being in a room full of people,” says Thorpe.
“Some of the young people would say they’ve experienced an anxiety in the last two years in relation to their sense of self, or their idea of who they are in relation to other people, because they’ve been at home with their phone for long periods of time.
“So a really big part of this for us has been about bringing them back into the building, creating a place for them to belong at Dundee Rep, and properly placing them front and centre.
“We want them to remember all those things about themselves, but also about why live arts are really important.
“Personally, I don’t want to lose young people to Netflix – I want them to be just as excited about the performing arts.”
OPTIMISM is at Dundee Rep Theatre today and tomorrow. dundeerep.co.uk
