Youngsters get to work on a theatre's revolutionary concept

To you and me that means they shut. Nobody sits in theatres during the summer months, so Yorkshire's venues take the opportunity to operate on a skeleton staff and carry out routine maintenance.

Not so at Hull Truck.

Just over a year ago, the company moved from its ramshackle old Spring Street home to the swanky new premises right in the city centre. Back at Spring Street, more than 20 people and the place felt full. At the new 15m theatre there is a lot more space – and the management were determined not to have people rattling around the building.

"At my first meeting, John (Godber) and Gareth (Tudor Price) said my job was to populate the new building, to make sure it wasn't just a glass and concrete edifice," says Mark Rees.

The former actor is head of Interact, the arm of Hull Truck which aims to engage with wider audiences. Interact runs the theatre's youth group, its over-55s' group, a writers' group, it takes workshops into schools and hosts them in the building.

"It's a pretty wide-reaching department," says Rees, who has seen the Interact office staff increase from two to five members in the two years he has been there and who has seen youth theatre membership increase from 100 to 300.

Although only one of a number of facets to Interact, one of the key things it does is run the theatre's youth arm.

Catering for youngsters from seven to 21, the youth theatre runs from Monday to Friday for 30 weeks each year, in line with school terms.

Rees agrees that youth theatre was in the past seen as a ghetto of the arts and that actors would often use it, and Theatre in Education, to get an Equity card, but the quality of work and the stature it now enjoys

within the industry sees youth work receive much more respect than it did in the past.

"I am given a budget and each year we produce a show, which is advertised alongside all the other mainhouse shows in the brochure,"

says Rees.

"It is something that we really believe in and the great thing is that the people within the theatre also believe in it."

The story is repeated around the region, with Stephen Joseph Theatre

and York Theatre Royal running extremely well attended sessions for younger people.

This year, the Hull Truck Youth Theatre is taking a big step up. Two years ago it presented Kes and last

year Willy Russell's Our Day Out.

Rees says: "Last year, John took me to one side and said, in his typical manner, 'do you want to keep doing soft stuff, or do you want to do something with a bit of meat on it'."

The challenge laid down, Rees accepted, and this year 26 members of the youth theatre company are taking on an impressive challenge – Peter Weiss's controversial play, Marat/Sade which was staged by the RSC in 1964, with Ian Richardson and Glenda Jackson directed by Peter Brook.

"It is a big step up and a big challenge for everyone involved," says Rees.

"The cast has been drawn from our youth theatre, but because the play is recommended for people who are 14 and over, we've cast the older members of the group.

"They are being given the full experience of working as professional actors.

"They come in from 9am to 4pm, working a full day, and we rehearse for a four-week period, just as we do for a professional, mainhouse show."

Influenced by Brecht, the play within a play construct features the inmates of the asylum of Charenton recounting the trials and tribulations of the French revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, under the insanely cruel direction of the Marquis de Sade.

It is a stretch for professional actors, which is why it is now little performed.

"We spent quite some time working with the actors before we even picked up the script, just working on the physicality that is needed and the understanding of the concept we are working within."

What's more, with a cast of 26 taking part, Rees is fulfilling his brief, laid down by his employers when he arrived, of "populating the building".

Marat/Sade, Hull Truck, August 25-28. Tickets on 01482 323638.