Skip to main content
Little Angel Theatre
Menu
group performance with robot puppet
group performance with robot puppet

Spectrum Youth Theatre

Autumn 2021

Our Autumn Term course is now underway but you can find out all about the course below.
Thursday evening for 8 weeks from 6.45pm – 8.15pm 
Please note that this term the course will run on a Thursday evening in our Studios space.
We will be taking a break for half term on 28 October. The penultimate week of term (18 November) will be an extended session to allow for filming time.  
The final week of term (25 November) will be a sharing event where we will premiere the film that participants have made during the course. 

Spectrum Youth Theatre (SYT) is a puppet youth theatre for young people with Asperger’s or autism. It began in May 2014, as a pilot project, with support from Turtle Key Arts, and has gone from strength to strength. They first performed on the stage at Little Angel Theatre in July 2014. It was a show called Maui’s Island and was directed by Joanne Skapinker and Scott Durkin.

This term

Spectrum Youth Theatre is back for the autumn and we are excited to announce that we will be returning to in person sessions.

Time to Celebrate!

Smoking Apples are back this autumn, for another Spectrum Youth Theatre. 

It’s Little Angel Theatre’s 60th birthday this autumn, what with that and life beginning to return to normal again there is a lot to celebrate. This term Spectrum Youth Theatre will be working together to create a puppetry film to help us remember we have a lot to celebrate – It’s party time!

Join award-winning Smoking Apples for a joyous experience exploring celebrations through puppetry and storytelling. Participants will get the chance to make their own puppet and work together, to create a captivating story, script and beautiful visuals for a short film.

Term Starts: Thursday 30 September

Half Term Break – No session Thursday 28 October

Extended Filming Session – Thursday 18 November (6.45-9.15pm)

Final sharing session – Thursday 25 November (friends and family invited)

History

Since it began in 2014, SYT has gone from strength to strength.

Between September 2015 and April 2017 the youth theatre worked with Smoking Apples. In March 2016 they presented a group devised piece entitled The Creature, which was performed, to much acclaim, at Little Angel Theatre (photo above). This was followed by an equally successful devised piece called Beyond the Flash, which was presented at Little Angel Theatre in March 2017.

 

Spectrum Youth Theatre were invited to perform Beyond the Flash at the first-ever Autism Arts Festival, which took place at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, on 29th and 20th April 2017.

Between September 2017 and March 2018, the youth theatre was led by Dylan Tate (Director) and Ellie Mills (Designer). They worked on futuristic themes to create a devised play called It’s Not the End of the World: ABOVE. This was presented as a double bill with It’s Not the End of the World: BELOW, devised and presented by Little Angel Youth Theatre. These shows were premiered at the Pauline Quirke Academy on 23 and 24 March 2018.

Who is Spectrum Youth Theatre for?

This is a perfect club for artists, model builders, designers, problem solvers, puppeteers, performers and people with big imaginations or a quirky take on life. We observe life and create fantastic stories about things that matter to us.

You can read more about Autism and Puppetry from the perspective of Josiah Carr, Spectrum Youth Theatre member, here.

“The course was inspiring and engaging. I feel I have learnt a huge amount about the art of puppetry and have improved my own puppetry skills. Thanks to Oliver for being such a patient teacher”.

– A course participant.