NYT REP Company
In 2012 Paul Roseby, Artistic Director and CEO of National Youth Theatre (NYT), launched a new REP company, co-created with Associate Director Anna Niland, that would provide intensive real-world experience each year to a group of young performers and creatives. Taking inspiration from the old repertory company model, the NYT REP has sought to bring its training and learning model sharply into the modern era. As well as presenting theatre, members of the company have performed and created work with NYT at London Fashion Week, This Bright Land and Latitude festivals, the Olympic and Paralympic Team Welcome Ceremony, and Glasgow’s COP26 presenting work that brought young people’s views on the climate crisis to the conference.
One of the only companies to stage productions the day theatres were allowed to reopen following the pandemic, the REP premiered a new production of Animal Farm at Northampton’s Royal and Derngate on 17 May 2021. Other notable productions have included the West End debut of James Graham’s Tory Boyz in 2013, the first stage adaptation of Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife at The Ambassadors Theatre in 2014, Macbeth at the Garrick Theatre which was the first production of the play in the West End to feature a female Macbeth, and Animal Farm, as part of an Arts Council funded national tour, performed on a farm at an outdoor theatre in Shropshire newly created in response to the pandemic.
The company has worked with a dazzling array of creative talent including Josh Azouz, Neil Bartlett, Dzifa Benson, Ned Bennett, Moira Buffini, Lolita Chakrabarti, Miranda Cromwell, Frantic Assembly, James Graham, Tatty Hennessy, Kane Husbands, Emily Lim, Michael Morpurgo, Gbolahan Obisesan, Evan Placey, Ed Stambollouian, Stephanie Street, Roy Alexander Weise and more.
The company has seen its former members go on to achieve remarkable success with graduates playing leading roles on stage and screen, including Lauren Lyle currently appearing in the title role in ITV’s Karen Pirie and BAFTA nominated Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù (His House, Gangs of London), both of whom are mentoring members of this year’s current REP Company.
Paul Roseby OBE, CEO & Artistic Director said: “We launched the NYT REP in 2012 in response to the rise in drama school fees, but the challenges faced by young talent around the UK today is greater than ever with the cost of living crisis and decline of arts in schools. This year’s REP will offer opportunity, entertainment and hope. Young will talent takeover an iconic West End venue with tickets from £10, Bola Agbaje’s award-winning debut is revived offering a welcome shake-up to the curriculum and a young director supported by the Bryan Forbes Bursary reinterprets a classic for our time. Learning by doing it through a free industry-based audience-facing approach has been a game-changer over the last 10 years, as the REP graduates leading major shows prove. Now more than ever we must support flexible free alternative routes for young talent to take centre stage and bring young talent and audiences back to the West End.”