Our Intermediate Youth Theatre discuss working on GOLD

The Courtyard’s Inspired Festival was created by and for young people, it is a platform for our Intermediate Youth Theatre groups to use theatre to express what is important to them. This year The Courtyard Intermediate Youth Theatre will be performing Gold.

Gold is a captivating play that tells the story of a group of Norwegian teenagers during the Second World War who are given the task of transporting Oslo’s gold reserves out of Norway and out of the hands of the Nazi’s who are occupying the country. Gold incorporates many important themes such as love, loss, betrayal and most importantly, courage. When combined these elements present the vital message that even small acts of courage or betrayal can have a great impact on the wider world.

We caught up with some of the cast of Gold who told us a little bit about the process they’ve been through with their characters and during rehearsals.

Drew Banham and Ryan Thomas:

In our Courtyard Youth Theatre sessions we are currently doing rehearsals for our upcoming performance of our play, Gold. The performance is about a group of Norwegian children crossing mountains, in an attempt to transport some of Oslo’s gold reserves, and encountering German spies. We are a part of the ensemble and we have many specialised parts along the way. Through being a member of the ensemble we have learnt a lot of group choreography which has helped us to improve as a team.

Clovis James-Moore:

In this production I play the role of an ensemble member which is pretty good. I like learning the complex choreography that we do as a group and the history of the Second World War that surrounds the play is really interesting and I have learnt a lot. I think that having a role in the ensemble is really important as without the ensemble, the stage would look empty and we are able to fill it with pieces of physical theatre that help to move the story along.

Rose Nicholson

My name is Rose Nicholson and I play the character of Anna. Anna has quite strong characteristics in the fact that she can control her emotions which displays how those emotions can contribute to the factor of WW2, which was the world at the time. Her boyfriend, Hjalmar, gets shot by a Nazi soldier and her family isn’t around so she has just got her friend Mari. This is when we see her personality grow to demonstrate how strong and intelligent she really is. We do see an anxious side which shows that she isn’t perfect, although that is how she is perceived to begin with. As the play progresses we do learn that Anna’s story is quite sad but it does show some reality of how it could have been back in that time period.

Her key moments in the play are Hjalmar getting shot and helping Mari transport the gold.

Lowri Rennick

My character of Siri is interesting as her personality is both strong and weak. She is decisive and she knows she hates the Nazis and she is not afraid to cut off her boyfriend, Anders, when he begins to exhibit doubts regarding the nature of the Nazis, believing their cause to almost be just.

Siri is certainly quick to display her emotions, however she can be rather defensive when questioned. She is forever quietly hopeful. For instance, she refuses to even entertain the thought that her parents would ever yield to the Nazis, because then nothing would make sense.

Throughout the play, Siri stays strong, however breaks at the very end. She says that she’s “so ashamed but not built for this” and leaves the company to find her family. This tells us that she has a strong sense of honour and duty and feels compelled to go to her family, even though that means that she must leave her friends and their adventure.

Lucia Jervis

My name is Lucia Jervis and I am playing the role of Inga in the performance of Gold. Inga is one of the girls who was dragged into helping Leif smuggled gold out of Norway. She has no problem with telling Leif when to stop. As the performance progresses Inga goes from being scared to being brave when faced with dangerous situations and this helps her relationship with Leif to develop throughout the performance as well.

Gold will be performed as part of The Courtyard Youth Theatre’s Inspired Festival on Monday 23 March at 6pm. Tickets are on sale now.