PYT’s Fairfield Arts Festival is here!

The Festival features a training program for young people in Sound Design, and Technical Operations.

It culminates in a 2 day event in live music and theatre.

The Fairfield Arts Festival will also happen alongside Shortcuts 2013.

Keep up-to-date on announcements by following us on Facebook.

Program

FRIDAY APRIL 12

4pm  Music at the Plaza

4:30pm Ane Tupou “Triple Clef”

5pm Angharad Yeo

5:30pm Afro Contemporary Dancers

SATURDAY APRIL 13

11am  Music at the Plaza

11:15am Arda Barut

11:45am Collin Gosper

12:15pm Blue Mary

7pm  Shortcuts Festival Night

• Spoken words, by Ana Nguyen
• The space between, by The PYT Ensemble
• Not a word, by Mon Sans Productions
• Neck and Neck, written by Donna Abela performed by The PYT Ensemble

Tickets for ShortCuts and Playfest can be purchased at http://festivalshortcuts2013.eventbrite.com.au (Music on the Plaza is a free event)

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Powerhouse Youth Theatre is 25 years young!

The company grew out of a one-off theatre project for unemployed young people. Playwright Donna Abela, who ran the first workshop on the 19th of January 1987, remembers:

“The Liverpool Community Youth Support Scheme employed me and director Stephen Mayer-MIller to run a theatre project. I was 22, a local kid in an area that at the time had no creative outlets, so I was as mad keen as the young people who turned up. The Casula Powerhouse back then was cold, cavernous, and full of pigeons, but we didn’t care. We had 13 weeks to write and stage a play, and everyone just threw themselves into it.’

25 years later, Powerhouse Youth Theatre has a homebase in Fairfield, at the pigeon-free Fairfield School of Arts. What started as a series of workshops, has grown into a professional organisation that reaches thousands of young people annually. Donna says:

‘We had no idea that from our incredibly humble beginnings PYT would become such a creative force in Western Sydney.’

Against many odds, PYT has survived two and a half decades. Current Artistic Director, Danielle Antaki, believes this is because:

‘This company has always been about the young people we work with. We are inspired by them and the communities they hark from. We have and will remain committed to sharing their stories and developing their talents.’

Were you part of our amazing history?

Did you abseil down the dilapidated Casula Powerhouse during 15 Second Later? Did you Find the Buffalo at the Phuoc Hue Temple, or Journey West among the colonial architecture of Liverpool TAFE? Maybe you floated down the Parramatta River in MotherFish, or told your story in Walk In My Shoes? If so, maybe you’ll recognise yourself in the following historical snapshots.

This is a proud year for PYT. We have so much to celebrate, and so many projects and people to sing about. If you have a PYT story you’d like to share, please get in touch with us. We’d love to add your memories to the record.

If you have a story or any paraphernalia about PYT over the years that you’d like to add to our growing collection – and/or you want to get involved in our big celebration on Thursday the 8th of November please contact danielle@pyt.com.au

Or join the online conversation on PYT’s facebook page – here!

Did you know? PYT’s first project started in 1987. Training workshops culminated in a public show called “Ratbags”, which was performed at the Francis Greenway Centre in Liverpool to an audience of 150. The final performance incorporated puppets, a graff backdrop, and an original soundtrack. Later the same year, PYT received a Sydney Morning Herald Youth Award for service to the community.

Did you know? In 1988, a think-tank of professionals led a special project called Unleaded Theatre that trained and employed four young people to do street theatre performance, administration, and schools workshops — equipping them with the skills to turn PYT from a one-off project into a company.

Did you know? PYT has been doing massive shows since 1990, starting with “15 seconds later”, involving a hundred participants and artists at the Casula Powerhouse, with acting, graff, live music and singing, martial arts, and abseiling.

 

Did you know? PYT hosted the NSW Youth Theatre Festival in 1990, with participants from all round the state camping over forthree days at Casula Powerhouse by the Georges River to do performances and workshops. Groups represented included PYT, Al-Zahra Community Centre and Shopfront Youth Theatre from Carlton, 2 to 5 Youth Theatre from Newcastle, Roo Theatre from Jamberoo, PACT from Erskineville, Bobbin Youth Theatre from Parramatta, Warringah Youth Theatre from Narrabean, and UWS.

 

Did you know? In 1991, PYT was running workshops in local high schools, and with community groups around Casula, Campbelltown, and Cabramatta in improvisation, voice, acting, Feldenkrais, writing, theatresports, playbuilding, video, outdoor performance, and circus. It toured a play across Sydney and to Newcastle. And a group of performers representing PYT went to Canberra to perform at Parliament House. In that year, it counted having run over 200 workshop sessions, involved 550 individual participants, and reached an audience of over 1500.

 

Did you know? PYT hosted part of the 1992 NSW Youth Theatre Festival, this time as part of a gigantic performance project “Conference of the Birds”. Participants camped out at Casula Powerhouse for two days of performances. Young people from round the state represented PYT, Hume Area Ventures, Hurlstone Agricultural High School, Liverpool Youth Needs Committee, Back to Basics, Airds-Bradbury Youth Centre, Ambarvale Youth Centre, SPDFGH, the Cook Islands Frangipani Dance Group, Roundabout Community Projects, 2 to 5 Youth Theatre, Canberra Youth Theatre, Shopfront Theatre for Young People, PACT, and ATYP.

 

Did you know? One hundred and thirty young people coming from across the Fairfield and Campbelltown region devised and performed in PYT’s 1993 performance project “Switched On” outside the Casula Powerhouse doing circus, theatre, hip hop dance, graff, video, sculpture, and percussion.

 

Did you know? In 1997, PYT worked with skilled and experienced indigenous artists, and young performers with the Gandangarra Land Council Youth Program, Urimbirra Youth Program, and the Duralli Aboriginal Centre. Together they created “The Living Floor”, a visual art and performance project inspired by the story of the floor design at Casula Powerhouse, and well as producing an education kit on local indigenous history.

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PYT would like to announce the arrival of Johanna Allen, our new Community Creative Producer. Johanna has worked as an artist/producer/director across a variety of mediums including theatre, film, television, live festivals and music performance and is excited to be calling Fairfield home.

“I’m sitting here on my first day – taking in all the projects that this organization has championed. I am excited by the challenge to create new stories, facilitate new projects and engage more artists and people with PYT. I hope to meet all of you in the coming weeks and work towards broadening our audience base, and furthering our community engagement across greater western Sydney and beyond.”

As Johanna transitions into her new role, she will be available Monday’s, Thursday’s and Fridays – so feel free to drop her a line to say hi.

Mobile Messenger was a collaboration of two languages, two cultures and two worlds. It delved into the experiences of young people who unveiled shared and personal stories of their experiences of communication, friendship, frustration, and technology’s influence over people and love.

We are standing on a verge of a communication revolution. Technology is having a major impact on the way we speak, write and sign. It has given individuals the freedom to “chat online” with mass amounts of people; online dating and love affairs are becoming more common; yet meeting people in public is a fading phenomenon. Where has the human touch gone? Welcome to Mobile Messenger.

I Do…But

We are in an era of opposites and fear. On one hand federal policies and newspeak promote ideologies of cultural harmony, and a happier, safer and more tolerant world. But on the streets of “multicultural” Australia, many people go about their insulated lives in segregated communities because of the fear and hype surrounding “other” communities.

The 2006 performance I Do…But aimed to educate the community about two non mainstream cultures and to celebrate their differences as much as their similarities.  I Do…But was a production that delved into national identity politics, the shifting definitions of “us” from “them” in contemporary Australian society.

Please check out the Hero Project Site

Threads and Threads II were two stages of a Powerhouse Youth Theatre involving recently arrived young refugees from countries like Bosnia, East Timor, Cambodia, Vietnam, and places in South America.

Threads II (1996) opened with a masked male figure, chanting loudly and urgently as he held his torch aloft in his search: “I’m looking for freedom. I am in a dark place. I’m looking for freedom.” It was a cry that would recur troughout the play, highlighting the sense of dislocation and longing common to all of them in their flight from their homelands.

Thread I was the first stage of the project completed in 1995, when young people from the same intensive language courses at Bankstown and Fairfield created spectacular theatrical costumes expressive of their experiences of war, sepraration of their families, waiting, hopes, dreams and new life.

Microfair was a creative development project and weekend symposium for young people with an interest in PC based art making.

Working with professional artists the participants learnt skills in digital, sound and video technologies, and their work were presented  during a weekend symposium at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.

Finding the Buffalo

Finding the Buffalo was co-produced with City Moon Vietnamese/Australian Youth Theatre in collaboration with the Phuoc Hue Temple.

A large site-specific community theatre developed for the grounds of the Phuoc Hue Temple in Wetherill Park. PYT and City Moon  saw this collaboration as an extension of their previous large-scale site-specific show, Journey West (1998). As that show explored cross-cultural performance in the context of an Anglo Australian heritage site, Finding the Buffalowas authored by an explicitly Asian site.

Developed with a large youth and community cast, and the temple community itself, Finding the Buffalo, brought together a strong physical theatre style, and a traditional SE Asian Buddhism teaching, to produce a rich, accessible and highly visual community theatre show. The performance was enthusiastically welcomed by large Vietnamese and non- Vietnamese audience over four performances in March 2001.

Club Wild is one of Australia’s leading music performance and community cultural development organisations run by and for people with disabilities. Club Wild‘s mission is to create opportunities for people with disabilities to establish and express their unique cultural identities, to celebrate and affirm these within their own communities and to participate fully in the cultural lie of wider Sydney.

For PYT, the two most important aspects of holding a Club Wild in 2005 was to foster development of young people with disability through an inclusive workshop program that fed into the event and aslo to create a funky nightclub experience where everyone could have fun and express themselves in an inclusive and accessible environment.

29 Suitcases was devised and performed by 29 people from Miller, Lurnea and Fairfield Intensive English Centres in 2005. The cast consisted of young people from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Serbia, Pakistan, Fiji, Argentina, Macedonia, Africa, China, Afghanistan and Chile all coming together here in Fairfield to bravely present their thoughts, ideas, and hopes for the future. By incorporating humour and drama combined with sound movement and projections, 29 Suitcases was able to capture and highlight the extraordinary journeys these people have experienced by either migrating or fleeing from their own country to trying to settle into the Australian way of life.

Created in 2010 in partnership with Fairfield City Council and supported by Fairfield High School this project worked with a range of community and theatrical forums to investigate how we communicate with each other within a family context and in doing so aimed to strengthen relationships between young people, their parents and grandparents.

The project was the culmination of over three years of discussion about intergenerational conflicts, raised time and time again by a diversity of groups – from Council officers, to community cultural groups, schools and interagencies. PYT’s involvement commenced in early 2009 as a result of an Intergenerational Forum held at Fairfield High School.  Fairfield Council, PYT and Fairfield High then came together to develop a plan for creating and devising a theatrical piece that would work with these issues and the young people and families of the local community to help understand some of the conflicts that can arise within family relationships.

In mid 2010, the project held a series of community consultations with students from Fairfield High and elders from a range of seniors groups from the Fairfield LGA as well as an Intergenerational Morning Tea event at PYT, where young people, parents and grandparents were all invited together to share perspectives and attempt to nut out some of the issues surrounding one of the oldest and most heated debates of all time. Put simply we were unpacking the old generational divide between the will to go forth, try new things, have new experiences, rebel against old ways of doing things, take risks… and the inclination to hold on to customs, respect traditions, look to the past for answers and for a sense of security.  This enormous oversimplification worked as a starting point to help investigate a range of many complicated issues and scenarios – and demonstrated how in the simplest of situations and conflicts there are often many complex and contradictory things going on for all the people involved, regardless of age.

Devisers and performers were then recruited from amongst the students and families who had taken part in the consultations and an intensive devising workshop occurred during the September school holiday period.  Using some of the ideas, stories and outcomes of the community consultations, three fictional family stories were created that exemplified some of the issues that had been shared and examined.

Through this project PYT created the ‘See It My Way – Intergenerational Resource Kit’.  This resource kit can be used in a number of ways in a range of community or educational contexts to provoke and generate discussion of the many issues surrounding intergenerational conflicts.  This can include working with community groups of any ages, large or small, facilitating a Forum or Convention exploring intergenerational issues or even teaching high school students in HSIE or Welfare lessons.

The ‘See It My Way – Intergenerational Resource Kit’ is available on DVD – to order a copy contact info@pyt.com.au

Stand Up, Speak Out – UpstageIt 2010

UpstageIt was a creative and professional development program for students and teachers in high schools and Intensive English Centres in South Western Sydney. The program aimed to link the Drama curriculum with professional performance practice and increase participation in arts and cultural activity for the community. The program also aimed to increase literacy, confidence and social interactions of newly arrived young people where English-speaking skills presented a barrier.

Delivered in two stages Part One engaged students and teachers from Intensive English Centres (IECs) in Fairfield High School and Lurnea High School. An artist-facilitator specialising in performance and playwriting worked with teachers in performance art forms to develop a small devised performance outcome with their students. Part Two was a skills development workshop for students from both Intensive English Centre classes and High School Drama classes. The Artist-Facilitator took on a more directorial role during this part of the Upstageit program as a way of providing a professional level experience to students. Stand Up Speak Out, a double bill of original work from students in theUpstageIt program was presented across two nights in September 2010 at the Fairfield School of Arts.

This performance not only served as an opportunity for young people to perform and voice their stories for family and peers, it also functioned as an exchange between both schools. The highlight of this exchange was the amount of support that each school group gave to one another during rehearsals, helping to maintain a mutually respectful environment for all participants.

This One’s On Me was part of a collaboration between the Powerhouse Youth Theatre, the South Western Sydney Area Health Service and a number of other regional organizations in 1995.

The play was looking at the real-life situations of young people’s use of alcohol and turned them into a play.

People in the audience could even step on stage and take part in the show !

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