Young actors will face their biggest challenge to date when they represent Dorchester in a national celebration of theatre. Joanna Davis reports.

TALENTED youngsters will be put to the test when they take to the stage of a professional theatre.

Members of Dorchester Youth Theatre (DYT) are heading to the Theatre Royal in Plymouth to perform on Friday, May 10 as part of a UK celebration of theatre run by the National Theatre.

The group also stands a chance of performing at the prestigious National Theatre in London.

The youngsters will perform Chaos, one of ten plays written for the Connections festival to be acted by 300 youth theatres and schools across the country.

The big performance comes after the youngsters from DYT's senior company impressed audiences with two stagings of Chaos at Dorchester Corn Exchanger last month.

Director Jo Simons said: "This is a huge thing for us. To perform at a purpose-built theatre and have the support of their staff is fantastic.

"Taking part in Connections is a special experience. It's not cheap to do as a company. It's something completely different for them and they've really risen to the challenge and have gelled as a company."

Chaos, by playwright Laura Lomas, is 'a symphony' of dislocated and interconnected scenes, which explores a series of characters searching for meaning in a complicated and unstable world. Bouncing through physics, the cosmos, love and violence, they find order in the disorder of each other.

Ella Ritsema, 14, of Charlton Down, said she is 'loving' her involvement in the Connections festival.

She said: "I love it. It's really fun and I really enjoy it.

"It will be nerve-wracking performing in Plymouth but it'll be good to see another youth theatre group perform as well.

"We're all quite close in the group as a result of doing Chaos. We're all close as we go to Thomas Hardye's school together but I think going to Plymouth will bring us even closer together."

Ella, who was also in a school production of The Wizard of Oz, said she would like to have a career in acting or musical theatre. She said her theatre idol is the creator of Hamilton - Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Being in a DYT play isn't the only acting role William Bishop, 14, of Tolpuddle has won.

He's also starring as a young Lawrence of Arabia in a film about the death of T.E. Lawrence, which is currently being filmed in Dorset.

Thomas Hardye School student William said he really enjoys performing Chaos in front of an audience.

"It's nice to do it in front of an audience and we could really feel the presence of the audience. Performing it at the Corn Exchange went really well," he said.

"Being on the main stage and having everything there, and the set, going from where we were rehearsing, it was amazing.

"DYT is a good group to perform with - we always connect well.

"We are all quite excited to be going to a different theatre and changing from in the round to end on. It's going to be such a challenge for us and we are really up for it."

In 2013 DYT was singled out as one of the best youth theatre groups in the country after taking part in Connections for the first time.

Its actors were one of ten groups in the UK asked to perform their play - in the case of DYT, Don't Feed the Animals - on the stage of the National Theatre in London.

Director Jo, who has directed with DYT for nine years, said the group's performance of Chaos was filmed in Dorchester and sent to the play's writer. The group's interpretation of the work will be looked at when it comes to deciding who will perform at the National Theatre.

Jo added: "Chaos is a very different sort of play for this group to do and they've been using many different skills and challenging themselves.

"We performed it in the round at the Corn Exchange and they will perform it in the end in Plymouth.

"For many of them this is the first time they have done multi-roleing.

"People in the audience told us how much they enjoyed it because it was so different."

Audience members also wrote on evaluation forms that they found Chaos to be 'thought provoking and really well acted' and they loved the 'clarity, energy and 'chaos' of the cast'.

A National Theatre director who was assigned to DYT's project an an educational outreach officer from Plymouth Theatre Royal were 'absolutely delighted' with the performance, company spokesman Carol Burgess said.

Some of the cast members' friends and family will come along on May 10 to see Dorchester Youth Theatre perform at the Plymouth Royal, Jo said, but she would love to see as many Dorchester residents as possible coming to support the youngsters.

"We would love as many members of the public to come along to Plymouth and see the Connections play. The theatre has 135 seats, which is a lot, and we want to fill as many as possible. There's nothing worse than playing to an empty theatre and perhaps people will come on a day trip to Plymouth, especially as it's a Friday night."

Rehearsals are now continuing apace before it's curtain up for Dorchester Youth Theatre.

Jo said: "I always say to them go with your gut instinct because your instinct is rarely wrong when you're an actor. I keep telling them rehearsing is just getting it wrong before you get it right.

"I'm so proud of them as young people and how they have grown as actors. They've put a lot of hard work into this and it's been a big commitment."