Talented member of Largs Youth Theatre (LYT) wowed the judges at an international festival last weekend to scoop a top award.
LYT won the Achievement in Acting Winners 2024 award after 28 children headed down from Largs to Birmingham for the big Music Theatre International Europe event.
This experience allowed all students, aged 13-18, to benefit from working with industry professionals, competing alongside thousands of theatre kids from across Europe and, to add particular shine to the weekend, lifting a trophy, which ‘blew everyone away’ as Johann McDougall told the News.
“It was tiring but amazing!’ said Johann, who is one of the founding members of LYT.
“There were 28 kids involved, two chaperones and seven tutors who all went down to Birmingham.
“It is a European junior festival where we have to compete with other drama groups and there were eight groups in our category, and our extract was from ‘Matilda’ and we were competing against kids from all over Europe, including Italy, Georgia, and there were even some Americans there as well in our group."
Thomas Sewell and Sofia Hussain were selected by the judges and appeared in the final. Thomas played Miss Trunchbull and Sofia played Amanda Thripp and they were amazing.
Johnn continued: “It is our second time going down there and winning the cup. We last won when we went down in 2021, and it is a real feather in our cap as there were a total of 2,000 children taking part.
“We chose to compete on the Saturday and left Largs at 11am on Friday and stayed overnight, before getting the bus back up on Saturday evening and arriving back in Largs at 3am on Sunday morning.”
The great thing about the event was the opportunity for children and tutors to work with professionals, with a singing and dancing workshop and professional ajudicators.
“I have to say the kids completely blew it out the park with a fantastic performance,” said Johann. “It was amazing to see. It was a huge fundraising effort too as we raised around £7,000 to get everybody there and we would like to thank everyone who provided sponsorship and who attended any of our fundraising events.”
Adding some further shine to the silverware, LYT have received the good news this week that they have received over £20,000 from the Venture Trust in North Ayrshire for lots of local events to benefit the children.
Johann said: “It is great news for the youth theatre following our big competition win, and we will reveal more details about the upcoming events soon.”
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