National Youth Music Theatre Hosts End-Of-Year Celebration With 2024 Company

To end a year of spectacular work, the National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) has announced they will yet again return for A Christmas Celebration at the iconic Smith Square Hall this December.

Leading youth arts organisation NYMT will celebrate their 50th year of providing exceptional opportunities in musical theatre for talented young people aged 10-23. NYMT A Christmas Celebration marks a special moment for the 2024 company of young performers, backstage teams and musicians to come together to pay homage to the incredible work carried out this year. 

Audiences will hear songs from this year's NYMT season including Stephen Sondheim's timeless classic Into the Woods; an ambitious new folk musical Catastrophe Bay written by Kit Buchan and Jim Barne; and Madness' Our House, that saw members of the company winning a Guinness World Record for most complete costume changes in a lead theatrical role – with 37 changes. There will also be teasers from the 2025 season, tasters of new musicals in development and, most importantly, some festive Christmas carols.

Chris Cuming, Artistic Director of the National Youth Music Theatre, comments, This year we have engaged with almost 500 young people, offering a vast range opportunities in skills courses and productions; onstage and offstage; for all ages; for all levels of experience; all over the country. We're proud to be able to provide industry-standard experiences to our Young Company Members and we are very excited to look forward to meeting more young people in 2025, which will be our 49th year at the vanguard of youth musical theatre. 

Just under a thousand performers auditioned to join the NYMT 2024 company. They will all be following in the footsteps of the newly appointed patrons and further NYMT alumni including multi-award-winning household name Idris Elba, Phantom of the Opera's Joe Griffiths-Brown, Hamilton's Mike Jibson and Les Misérables' Rosy Church. The newly appointed patrons for this year included previous alumni - critically acclaimed Matt Lucas, the award-winning Amara Okereke and It's a Sin's Callum Scott Howells. Industry professionals delivered audition workshops at 19 venues across the UK and Ireland at the start of the year. Alongside these, NYMT has seen an increase in applications to join the company as Musicians and the Creative Team Mentorship Scheme.

Ahead of the Christmas celebration, the NYMT 2024 companies' work is still running with the PLATFORM (18-26) project taking place in Manchester and London this October. This follows the success of another innovative and collaborative work, Crescendo, at the Other Palace earlier this month, and is designed to provide young artists with a prolonged opportunity to both showcase their talents and express their unique artistic identities. It spotlights a company of dynamic and inspiring individuals whose instincts and knowledge have been supported and nurtured in creating a performance alongside a world-class creative team.  

NYMT are committed to delivering top-quality professional development and this year are releasing new courses for not only stage performers but also for people who are interested in being Creative, Writers or want to work in Technical Theatre. These are non-residential courses in London that include watching a technical and dress rehearsal at Southwark Playhouse as well as working with Industry Professionals. They offer skills workshops, masterclasses, and residential courses.

NYMT welcomes everyone to get involved and is committed to making musical theatre and the professional industry more accessible to young people across the country, regardless of location or economic circumstances. The organisation has a long-standing commitment to an inclusive and accessible ethos. This year NYMT has offered almost £50,000 of bursaries from their bursary system to support under-resourced families. 

With exciting news in the works, NYMT asks the industry to watch this space ahead of some momentous announcements just around the corner.  

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