'My day on a BYMT project' | Paperboy

Every year BYMT welcomes over 300 young people and puts them at the very centre of the creative process to produce some vibrant, innovative and original musical theatre shows in some of the UK's top venues and festivals. For some of these young people it's their first experience on stage. 

Just to shed some light on what is actually happening in our projects, we decided to share the inside experience from one of our participants. 

Tom, 17, from Kirkcudbright, Scotland, have already taken part in 3 of our shows including Paperboy 2018 and Paperboy 2019 at the Lyric Theatre Belfast. 

Based on Tony Macaulay's memoir and adapted for the stage by platinum-selling singer and songwriter Duke Special and well-known stand-up comedian Andrew Doyle, Paperboy became a sell-out smash-hit musical in 2018 and has gone even bigger in 2019. It's a coming-of-age heart-warming story about 12-year-old boy, Tony, who works as a paperboy in Belfast in the 1970s. The city is divided and bombs are going off left and right, but Tony is more interested in Doctor Who and outer space. 

Tom has given us an inside look into his personal experience, a day in the life rather, being involved in Paperboy. His blog describes one of the day at the end of the project when the cast had their tech rehearsals at the theatre before the start of the show run. Read the blog and get a glimpse of what it was like to work on a full-scale BYMT production.

"Today was a special day for the Paperboy cast. Our premiere day is approaching but today we are just going to the Lyric Theatre Belfast to run through a technical rehearsal ('tech').

We all woke up to a hearty breakfast at the accommodation where we lived all together with our creative team and the pastoral staff. After breakfast we hurriedly prepared our hairstyles a la Donny Osmond in preparation for the theatre. The show was set in the 1970s, so each hairstyle needed to be up-to-date with this era. This was more so exciting for the boys who promptly gelled their hair whereas the girls were sporting high nit buns, much to their distress!

Having met up outside, the cast and chaperones walked across some of Belfast to the Lyric Theatre. Our accommodation was just 20 minutes walk from the theatre and we did this every day before and after each show, walking down the street in sun and rain.

Once we arrived at the theatre we jumped into a hard day of preparation for our upcoming performances. We were given our mic packs and went into the audience to receive some notes from Steven and Dean, our Directors, on how to improve our performance. Eventually the time came for us to begin and we slowly went through each scene in costumes with lights and sound. Usually the tech rehearsals took much longer than an actual performance because there were plenty of pauses and repetitions to make each scene work perfectly. It's not easy to bear in mind every detail of your part and on top of that remember all your notes given in the process. But we usually supported each other and reminded each other the forgotten bits.

After the first part of the tech (it wasn't even a half of the show) we took a lunch break and enjoyed a delicious packed lunch courtesy of Victoria College, which was where we were staying. After lunch we carried on working until we finished the day just after 8:30. We had a later start, allowing us to have energy for the upcoming shows, we were able to finish the tech the next morning.

This was definitely one of the more busy days of the whole Paperboy experience but it was definitely worthwhile. Being able to spend time each day doing what you love with so many new and old friends is an incredibly magical and worthwhile experience."

Paperboy was an absolutely outstanding show and a great success in Belfast this year. We are looking to come back to the Lyric Theatre Belfast next summer with a new show based on the second Tony Macaulay's memoir, Breadboy, about 'what paperboy did next'.

If you want to have the same experience working with theatre professionals, developing a full-scale musical theatre production and performing in a professional venue, sign up for our auditions NOW. We will be touring across the UK and Ireland in February 2020 looking for young performers to star in one of our 8 productions next summer. Don't hesitate and join us on our NATIONAL AUDITIONS TOUR