I'm often asked how and why the group came into existence.

The ‘why’ is easy to answer. I had worked on shows with teenagers for several years and let‘s face it, some are brilliant, some are good, and some, well need to find another career. On a trip to Scotland in in the early nineties I stumbled across an unknown company perfoming a show called ONCE UPON A WAR. It was the National Youth Music Theatre and all the cast on stage were brilliant.

Two years later while driving some students back from an NYMT audition in London, one of the girls who knew she hadn’t got in, asked if we could form our own National YMT. “Of course we could” I replied, then thought about it. After rejecting the notion and the idea of a Norfolk YMT we settled for the North Norfolk YMT. My aim therefore was to pool the talents of the most brilliant teenagers from North Norfolk to produce a theatre company of excellence. The ‘how’ was a little more difficult.

As the National had been such an inspiration I got involved with the company and went to Edinburgh with them for the next two years. I got to sit in the rehearsals and watch shows like PENDRAGON and WHISTLE being evolved. I worked as a driver, chaperone, office boy!, and saw how to run such a company. How you don’t have to have seven months of rehearsals to stage a show but how to do it in seven weeks. My time there, and at workshops in Bishop Stortford, was invaluable. The dream could become a reality. We could start a NNYMT but where do you start?

The Sheringham Little Theatre seemed a good place to open and I also looked at staging a show at the Fakenham Community Centre, But which show? I wanted to do something that was completely different from anything that other groups were doing and the obvious choice was that show I had seen in Edinburgh four years ago - ONCE UPON A WAR. I contacted Denise Coffey and Richard Taylor, the owners of the show and with their permission we could start. However I could see that that the project might become bigger than its original intention and decided to move the production to the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, despite the financial risks that staging an unknown work with children presented.

There was just one more major hurdle. We had to have some up-front funding to kick start the project. Astonishingly someone I knew arranged a grant from the Norwich and Peterborough Building Society for £1000. I also asked several local companies to fund the idea and was given £500 from the Cromer and Sheringham Operatic Society and £300 from the John Jarrold Trust so with £1800 in the new company account I ordered 200 posters to be printed and began putting them up in shop windows and schools in North Norfolk expecting a handful of replies. Within a week around 200 children telephoned to ask for an audition. It was time to find a rehearsal room. Aylsham seemed fairly central and the Middle School accommodating so on February 2nd 1995 with one of my piano students taking on the role of rehearsal pianist, auditions for a cast began.

Although ONCE UPON A WAR only sold 48% of the seats, it was enough to give me the confidence to take the group to its second project, THE RAGGED CHILD at the University of East Anglia Drama Studio in the following spring, and return to the Maddermarket for another Richard Taylor work, WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, in November. For the next year the company continued to rehearse in mid-Norfolk and perform in Norwich but it was attracting applications from areas outside the North Norfolk catchment and eventually the company had to change the rehearsal venue to a school in Norwich just off the southern bypass (which increased the number of audition applications) and also change its name to the more apt NORFOLK YOUTH MUSIC THEATRE.

Since those early days nearly fifteen years ago, the company has gone through many changes and seen many cast members and helpers come and go. The relationship with the Maddermarket Theatre has thrived and the group still perform there today. In 1999 the company was invited to perform at the Norwich Playhouse and continues to do so with an annual show and for many years the company toured around Norfolk with open-air shows.
Throughout this period the company continued to promote unknown works and to involve professional directors whenever it was possible and affordable. Jeremy James-Taylor from the National Youth Music Theatre, Hiawyn Oram the author of Vackees, Richard Taylor the composer, National Youth Director, Wendy Cooke, Rosemary Bianchi the Oxford Playhouse set designer and Blood Brother's Director Bob Tomson and Brian Spence have all been involved with the group.

Throughout the last few years the company has continued to develop and
our shows have become larger and more complex. CABARET, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, Sondheim’s SWEENEY TODD, INTO THE WOODS and Schoenberg’s LES MISÉRABLES are all recent productions. We have recently started to perform further afield at the Corn Exchange theatre in King’s Lynn and the Edinburgh Festival.

In 1999, 2008 and 2009 the group won Noda, BEST PRODUCTION AWARDS for the Eastern Region. Read about our awards here

Hundreds of young people have passed through the company over the past
16 years - many have gone on to professional careers in the music theatre
world. We are known nationally and receive many requests for advice and
help and although not the original intention, Norfolk is now one of the few counties that boasts a county music-drama company for teenagers.

So the new question I get asked is, “how much longer?”
Ask me again in 2015.

Adrian Connell - Artistic Director