About TYA with Julia Flood
MTC Artistic Director Julia Flood
Digging Up Dessa Rehearsal with Rae Davis, Lizi Watt, and Julia Flood
Metro Theater Company is a Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) company. What does that mean?
Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) is a specific type of theater that creates stories centered from a young person's point of view. Usually, those stories are rooted in the experience or the imagination of a young protagonist.
The characters in a professional TYA play may sometimes be played by young actors, but at Metro Theater Company and many other TYA companies, the young characters are played by adult professionals. The artists and technicians working on the production are all professionals who do this for a living. Many of them also work at other professional theater companies, including those that create work for an adult audience.
Unlike other forms of theater, Theatre for Young Audiences plays may be specifically geared toward a very particular age group. Theater for the Very Young (TVY) for example is performed for children younger than five years of age. Or a TYA play may be designed to give a multigenerational family audience a shared experience of a story about a young person's experience. In these instances, the play will resonate differently for the younger family members than it does for the adult audience members who bring a different level of life experience to the theater. Sharing an experience of live theater may create the opportunity to discuss issues raised in the play across generations. Whatever the target age of the audience, a performance of a play by a professional TYA company should be entertaining and enlightening for an audience member of any age.
What do you enjoy about Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA)?
As a person who has worked in both the "adult" theater world and the world of TYA, I can say that there is nothing more rewarding than watching a young person discover live theater for the first time. Our young audiences live in a moment of human development where they can move from reality into imaginary worlds and back with ease. They are able to immerse themselves in the story in a way that, as adults, most of us have forgotten how to do. As TYA artists, we can help them to imagine new worlds that may help to open them up to new experiences and new ways of thinking. It is a privilege and thrill that never gets old.
Photos from past Metro Theater Company productions.
