Youth theatre raises more than $68k to carry forward 50-year legacy

Sydney theatre Shopfront Arts Co-Op has empowered young people for 50 years Joining Shopfront Arts Co-Op changed Paul Capsis's life. Fresh out of high school, the writer and performer — known for the 1998 movie Head On — was dragged by a friend to watch a show at the youth theatre in southern Sydney in 1983. Seeing performers his own age on stage was "remarkable", he recalls. "It was a magical experience," he says. "I was like, 'What have I been missing out on all these years?'" After the show, Shopfront's co-founder, director Errol Bray, invited him to get involved in its upcoming production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The theatre became a refuge after Capsis's difficult school years. "I was severely bullied," he says. "You start to think that is how the world is going to be outside." At Shopfront, Capsis began writing and performing in his own shows, created in collaboration with other young people in the company. "It was a major thing to be with people that liked me," he says. "We laughed and we performed and we hung out. "It was healing after my horrific years at high school." The youth theatre that shaped Capsis's life turned 50 this month. Over the past five decades, it has kick-started the careers of artists including Olivier Award-nominated performer Trevor Ashley, former Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Andrew Upton, and playwright Hilary Bell. It also continues to empower young people as performers, writers and decision-makers, and has also been acknowledged by the wider industry at the Sydney Theatre Awards. Making big things happen One of its award-winning shows, The Lies We Were Told, created with Australian Theatre for Young People, was remounted at the Sydney Opera House this month in celebration of the company's 50th anniversary. It followed a youth conference, featuring Heartbreak High star Thomas Weatherall and musician Dobby, and a 50-hour act-a-thon fundraiser, which aimed to raise $50,000 for the theatre. It raised more than $68,000. The act-a-thon was a fitting tribute to the company's punk past, not only bringing together alumni with the current ensemble, but replicating its successful fundraiser of 1978. That year, to avoid eviction, the young people of Shopfront resolved to buy the building and raised a $43,000 deposit through an act-a-thon, raffles and government support. It is a history Shopfront's Young Leader, Liv Tsigaropoulos, who works as a conduit between the theatre's staff and young people, knows well. When she was in Year 9, she made a mini documentary about the theatre for the National History Challenge, which won her the national Democracy Matters award. By then, she had already been part of Shopfront for a couple of years, having started when she was 13. Now 19, she's thrilled to be a custodian of the company during its anniversary year. "It's the best time to be Young Leader," she says. "It's such a full-circle thing. I remember reading about the act-a-thon when I was doing my research." The performance of The Lies We Were Told is part of that full-circle feeling; Tsigaropoulos auditioned for that show when she first joined Shopfront in 2021. "Since that, I never left, and they could never get rid of me," she says. Over her six years with the theatre, she has participated in its drama workshops, made short films, learned about technical production, and joined one of its five advisory panels. For Tsigaropoulos, the special thing about being part of the theatre is the lengths it will go to bring a young person's ideas to life. She recalls how that gave her the "confidence to stand by [her] ideas". "In a space like Shopfront, you can say a crazy, big, unrealistic or impossible goal, and the Shopfront staff make it happen," she says. "You're gonna see your words expressed on stage, what you think expressed on stage, and that's so special … People watch it and laugh and cry." For example, she suggested she start a show stuck outside. "It was so silly," she says. "I was like, 'I've missed the show.' "It's small things I think are funny or cool and would want to see. Getting that put in a show is really fulfilling." Now, it is up to her as Young Leader to help make those things happen for the next generation of young people. "The only thing more beautiful than [your idea being brought to life] is working at Shopfront, and a young person tells you an idea, and you make it happen," Tsigaropoulos says. The next 50 years The money from the fundraiser will help Shopfront keep bringing young people's ideas to life at a time when funding for arts companies can be precarious. It is something Shopfront knows all too well, having lost multi-year funding from the federal government alongside many youth arts companies in 2016, and again in 2021. Shopfront is currently receiving funding from Creative Australia and Create NSW. The money raised will also help the theatre stay open to everyone, through scholarships and free tickets to performances. "We never turn young people away if they can't afford it," Tsigaropoulos says. "We'd rather lose money and let a young person come for free and get to experience Shopfront." Capsis recalls his own fundraising efforts for Shopfront, standing on a box outside Hurstville Station, singing Janis Joplin. "We're raising money, we're making shows, and that became my blueprint," he says. "The big world of professional theatre and musical theatre didn't see me as somebody they wanted, so I made my own work." It was his training ground, which saw him tour shows to the UK and Canada, and sing on stage for the first time. "Some people go to NIDA [National Institute of Dramatic Art] and they do three years intensive," Capsis says. "I did Shopfront theatre one night a week and every weekend." It also helped him make connections, including with Hillary Bell and Julian Meyrick, who collaborated on his award-winning one-man show about his Maltese grandmother, Angela's Kitchen. "It all comes from Shopfront," he says. For Capsis, what sticks out is how the theatre empowered him and the young people around him. "I think it's extremely important young people have a place to voice how they feel, and to learn," he says. That centring of young people may be what's behind the longevity of Shopfront Arts Co-op, Australia's longest-running and only youth-owned and led theatre company. "[That longevity is] a testament to all the people who have ever come through Shopfront and the determination, the belief they have in amplifying young people's voices, and that has stayed at its centre since the very beginning," Tsigaropoulos says. She adds empowering young people remains important, even if they don't want to pursue careers in the arts. "We're not an acting school pumping out mini DiCaprios and Margot Robbies," Tsigaropoulos says. "[But] it gives a lot of people a place where they feel they belong and feel welcome and feel accepted." [Image text:] SILEN Set y level volum