The National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) is an arts organisation in the United Kingdom providing pre-professional education and musical theatre stage experience for young people. Based in London, it is constituted as a private limited company (originally named Children's Music Theatre Limited) and as a registered charity. NYMT was founded in 1976 by director and playwright Jeremy James Taylor. Since its inception, it has produced over fifty productions at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, premièred thirty new musical theatre works, toured several times outside the United Kingdom, and had runs in the West End and on Broadway. Amongst the many alumni of the National Youth Music Theatre who have gone on to careers in the performing arts are actors Idris Elba and Jude Law, both of whom are also patrons of the organisation, along with Jonny Lee Miller, Dylan Strazar, Sheridan Smith, Connie Fisher, and Matt Lucas. Alumni have also included directors such as Jo Davies, and songwriters such as Tara Mcdonald.
Activities
The NYMT's primary activity is the education of young people in theatre production and performance. It produces and commissions musical theatre works in which young people between the ages of 11 and 23 perform as actors, musicians, and stage crew under the guidance of theatre professionals. The company tours both in the UK and abroad performing established musicals such as Sweeney Todd and Oklahoma!, as well as new works specifically written to be performed by young people. Amongst the thirty new works which the NYMT has commissioned and/or performed for the first time are Howard Goodall's The Dreaming and The Kissing Dance, and Alan Ayckbourn's Orvin - Champion Of Champions. The NYMT also runs residential and day workshops in various aspects of theatre production and performance. The company has no core funding and relies upon participants' fees, ticket sales, and fundraising. Young people who participate in the NYMT's productions and workshops do so as amateurs and meet their own expenses and fees, although the company provides bursaries in cases of need.
History
1976 to 2003
The NYMT had its beginnings in 1976, when its founder Jeremy James Taylor, produced The Ballad of Salomon Pavey in a tent on the lawn of Belmont School in Mill Hill, North London. The musical, performed by twenty boys at the school, was based on the life of the 17th century boy actor, Salomon Pavey, with a book by Taylor and David Drew-Smythe. Taylor then took the production to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where it won a Scotsman Fringe First award. Appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe in other musicals performed entirely by school children followed in succeeding years with Helen Come Home, or Achilles the Heel (1978) and Tin Pan Ali, or The Sesame Street Racket (1979). The company became known as the Children's Musical Theatre and in 1980 was registered as a private limited company and as a charity. In 1985 it changed its name to the National Youth Music Theatre and began holding residential workshops in addition to its summer productions.
In 1986, The Ragged Child by David Nield, Frank Whately and Taylor, along with Let's Make an Opera, was performed on the Edinburgh International Festival. The Ragged Child went on to Sadler's Wells in Spring 1987 and was filmed for BBC TV a year later. It became one of the company's flagship productions. With its 1998 production of The Ragged Child, the NYMT also became the first touring company to perform at the new Glyndebourne opera house. October's Children by the same team of Nield, Whately and Taylor played on the International Festival in 1990 and in the following year at Sadler's Wells and the Swan Theatre, Stratford. Pendragon by Peter Allwood, Frank Whately, Joanna Horton and Jeremy James Taylor won a Scotsman Fringe First Award in 1994, followed by a tour to the Far East and then a week at the New York City Center where it was given the accolade of New York Times Critics' Choice. By 2003, the company had presented 53 productions at the Edinburgh Fringe, premiered 29 new music theatre commissions, held eight foreign tours, and had runs in the West End and on Broadway.