Youth 14+ years

Voice, Movement & Acting Technique classes designed to harness & develop young talent in an encouraging, supportive & creative environment

Youth Members can also enrol for the prestigious Trinity Guildhall Speech & Drama exams (tuition & exam fees available on request). ACT is a registered Trinity Guildhall Examination Centre.

Anyone may enrol throughout the year to join ACT Youth: however for specific productions or projects (such as when participating in the official Brighton Festival or National Theatre Connections project) application to join the Youth Theatre is by Audition only. Productions and projects will incur additional costs and a binding commitment to the rehearsal and performance schedule for students. Auditions are open to members and non-members of ACT Youth Theatre. For any members not wishing to take part in the productions or projects, classes will take place alongside these as normal.

Enrolling now...

All classes taught by experienced industry professionals from ACT's Vocational Actor Training courses.
ACT Youth meets on Saturdays 1.30pm - 4.30pm at ACT Brighton 8-10 Rock Place Brighton BN2 1PF.

Please contact us to book a taster session

Current Production

You 2.0

Connections is the National Theatre’s annual, nationwide youth theatre festival. The programme is 30 years old and has a history of championing the talent of young people from across the UK. Every year, Connections commissions new plays for young people to perform. The programme brings together some of the UK’s most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow.

ACT Youth Theatre are delighted to once more be part of this exciting festival and will be working on their production of You 2.0 by Alys Metcalf which they will perform in early 2025 at The Lantern Theatre, Brighton and Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells

Previous Productions

The IT

By Vivienne Franzmann

Sat 13th 7pm & Sun 14th July 6PM

A teenage girl has something growing inside her. She doesn't know what it is, but she knows it's not a baby. It expands. It has claws. Eventually it takes over the entirety of her body.

No one must know about it. She has to keep its presence, its possession of her, concealed. She pulls away from her friends. She refuses to speak, in case 'The IT' is heard. But she can't contain it forever. Sooner or later something's got to give...

Presented in the style of a direct-address documentary, Vivienne Franzmann's The IT is a darkly comic state-of-the-nation play exploring adolescent mental health and the rage within.

Presented by ACT Youth Theatre

Tickets: £7.50 / £5.00

Directed by Alice Elliott

The Laramie Project

Thur 01 June @ 3pm
Fri 02 June @ 3pm

ACT Youth Theatre proudly present The Laramie Project directed by Hasan Dixon.

The Laramie Project is a 2000 play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Project, about the reaction to the murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The murder was denounced as a hate crime and brought attention to the lack of hate crime laws in various US states, including Wyoming.

After Matthew’s murder in 1998, members of the Tectonic Theatre Project in New York City travelled to Laramie, Wyoming, to interview residents about how the attack on Matt had affected the town. These transcripts were transformed into the play The Laramie Project, which tells the stories of real people who lived at the epicenter of one of the nation’s most heinous anti-gay hate crimes.

An example of verbatim theatre, the play draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries, and published news reports. It is divided into three acts, and eight actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.

BUBBLE @
The Rotunda Theatre
Regency Square
Brighton
BN1 2FG

Tickets £10.00 / £8.00

Teatro Rumore at the Gran Teatro Puccini in Viaggio

On Sunday 21st June 2015 16 members of the ACT Youth group accompanied by four of their tutors boarded a flight to Pisa in Italy to take part in a week of workshops and performances hosted by Teatro Rumore at the Gran Teatro Puccini in Viaggio

This was the start of an exciting adventure but also the end of a longer journey. The play they were going to perform - Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent was written as part of the National Theatre New Connections Festival 2015.

Each year ten established playwrights are commissioned to write a play for young people to perform and out of the numerous entries 500 companies are chosen to take part. Each company works on one play and has a home performance and one at a local partner theatre. For ACT, based in Brighton, the partner theatre was Chichester Festival Theatre with the performance happening at the Capital Theatre in Horsham. The National Theatre sends a member of their directing team to each of the home performance to report on the production. Our Hacktivists group had an extremely positive report from the visiting director and encouraged by this had gone on to The Capital in Horsham, which is a big venue seating 600 people - undaunted our young actors did an excellent performance.

With kind permission from the playwright ACT secured the rights to perform Hacktivists in Italy as part of a cultural exchange with Teatro Remore. In May the Italian youth theatre visited the UK and performed at The Lantern Theatre, ACT's performance space as part of the Brighton Festival. Their show 'Questo Strangolato Rumore' (This Strangled Noise) was both dynamic and poignant looking at issues of mental health and inspired by the work of Mario Tobino, who worked in a mental hospital from 1942 to 1980.

ACT Youth News & Archive

Hacktivists
by Ben Ockrent

When Eloise is tasked with showing new girl, Beth, around the school, she takes her to the "Hackerspace" where her and her gang of nerdy friends hang out - a disused portacabin they've turned into a student-run IT lab. Although the gang call themselves Hackers, their activities are entirely harmless... Until the gang's self-elected leader, Archie, is humiliated by the school bully and Beth inspires them to use their tech-savviness to avenge him. Revelling in their newfound power, the group allow Beth to lead them in an increasingly dangerous direction. With Archie usurped and everyone in Beth's thrall, just what kind of hackers will they become and what will it take to stop them?

Hacktivists appears as part of The National Theatre New Connections 2015 - the UK's most exciting festival of Youth Theatre.

Venue: Lantern Theatre @ ACT Brighton
Date: 19th - 21st February 2015
Time: 8pm (doors 7.30pm)
Tickets: £7 (£5 Cons)

Venue: The Capitol Theatre, Horsham
Date: Friday 8 May 2015
Time: 7pm
Tickets: TBC

AKT Youth Theatre
Journey To X
By Nancy Harris
Directed by Tegen Hitchens

A group of friends have formed a new band. Now all they have to do is raise the money to get to London to audition for the world's biggest talent contest.

Costumes, songs and fundraising techniques may divide opinion but one girl has a far more important choice to make. Their journey for fame and fortune is really a journey for something far less glamorous. Something their country doesn't approve of, something their parents wouldn't condone. In a culture of instant fame and talent-show 'stories', the importance of life and friendship come to the fore.

A tale about friendship, a journey and the risks that teenagers take when plunged into an adult world.

Journey To X appears as part of The National Theatre New Connections 2011 - the UK's most exciting festival of Youth Theatre.

Venue: The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove BN3 1AS
Date: 17th & 18th March 2012
Time: 8pm (doors 7.30pm)
Tickets: £7.00 (£5.00 Cons)

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre
Date: 24th March 2012
Time: 7pm
Tickets: £5.00 (£4.00 Cons)

ACT Youth Theatre
Bassett
by James Graham

Directed by Janette Eddisford & Daniel Finlay

Citizenship class at Wootton Bassett School and the supply teacher has gone a bit nuts, doing a runner and locking the pupils in. That's bad enough, but tensions are higher today than normal, a day when only yards from their confinement a repatriation of fallen British soldiers is happening along the high street - as it has over a hundred times before through this quiet Wiltshire town. And this one is more personal than most ...

Dean needs the toilet, Aimee needs a coffee, Amid needs to pray, and Leo ... well, Leo really, really wants to be at the repat, and is determined to escape. As factions form and secrets are revealed, maybe he's not the only one who'll want to get away.

Bassett is a pacy, funny and exhausting look at young people who have inherited a world at war; who, as they grow older, are starting to ask questions about these conflicts, their country, and themselves.

Venue: The Sallis Benney Theatre, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton BN2 0JY
Date: 11th - 12th March 2011
Time: 8pm (doors 7.30pm)
Tickets: £7.00 (£5.00 Cons)

Fugee
by Abi Morgan

The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, BN3 1AS
2nd & 3rd May 2010

Directed by Elaine Heath

Fugee: Slang for refugee of political oppression or natural disaster.
Fugeed: Something that has been lived in, soiled, stained or damaged.

Kojo is 14 but no one believes him; he's just one of the unaccompanied minors arriving in London, abandoned on the streets of the UK. Ara's from Baghdad and still hears the bombs at night. Cheung can do back flips and is from village in China that is more than a thousand years old. Orphans in London, they are the only family they have now. Together they tell Kojo's story: a story of lost childhood, tall trees and a murder in motion; a murder by a child that everyone says is a man.

ACT Youth Theatre are the oldest of our AKT - Act Kids Theatre groups which meet during term time on a Saturday morning. ACT Youth won 1st Place in 'Group Acted Scene' at this year's Springboard Brighton and Hove Youth Performing Arts Festival with an extract from Fugee. For more details please visit our AKT pages.

Part of the Brighton Fringe Festival
Fringe venue: 145

DATES: 2nd & 3rd May 2010
TIME: 7.30 pm (Doors 6.30pm)
VENUE: The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, BN3 1AS
TICKETS: £7.00 (£5.00 concessions)
AVAILABLE FROM: Fringe Festival/Dome Box Office 01273 709 Old Market 01273 736222 ACT 01273 818266

Well done ACT Youth

ACT Youth Theatre have won 1st Place in 'Group Acted Scene' at this year's Springboard.

Performing Arts Festival held at the Old Market in Hove. The group won with an extract from Fugee by Abi Morgan which they are performing in its entirety back at the Old Market on May 2nd & 3rd as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival 2010.

ACT Youth member Amy collected the Festival Shield and winners' certificate from head adjudicator Phillip Thrupp who praised the group on their ensemble skills and how well they had told a powerful and political story through their imaginative use of the stage.

For more information and to book tickets for ACT Youth's production of Fugee please go to our What's On page or visit the Brighton Fringe Festival website.

Fugee by Abi Morgan was originally written for the 2008 National Theatre New Connections. Kojo is 14 but no one believes him; he's just one of the unaccompanied minors arriving in London, abandoned on the streets of the UK. Ara's from Baghdad and still hears the bombs at night. Cheung can do back flips and is from village in China that is more than a thousand years old. Orphans in London, they are the only family they have now. Together they tell Kojo's story: a story of lost childhood, tall trees and a murder in motion; a murder by a child that everyone says is a man.

Abi Morgan's award-winning plays include Skinned, Sleeping Around, Tiny Dynamite and Tender and Splendour, which was recently broadcast on Radio 3. For TV: My Fragile Heart, Murder, Tsunami - The Aftermath and Sex Traffic, a multi-award-winning drama for Channel 4. Film includes Brick Lane, an adaptation of Monica Ali's bestselling book. White Girl, a 90-minute film for BBC2 will be broadcast in early 2009.