THE creative and imaginative, wordless world of masked theatre came to a Worcester youth musical drama group and was enjoyed by all.

The young performers discovered that you don’t necessary need words to get across a message.

The Worcester-based Vamos Theatre took their one-hour workshop to the 65 members of Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society’s Youth Section - WODYS - giving the youngsters, aged eight to 18, chance to explore the extraordinary experience of full mask theatre.

Afterwards a few of the youth group summed up the mornings workshop as ‘really good fun’, but ‘quite difficult to show what you wanted to say by using gestures instead of words’.

A spokesman said: “Vamos, which is based at Worcester Arts Workshop, tours full-scale mask theatres productions as well as offering workshops showing people how to create characters and communicate with body language and gestures but without speech.”

A Vamos spokesman added: “Our trademark style marries full mask with strong visual design and an original soundtrack.

“We make accessible, humorous, human, and fearless work which is based on real life stories, and our productions are rooted strongly in social research.”

The spokesman added: “We have a national network of over 100 venues that expands with each new production, including leading contemporary arts venues and festivals such as London International Mime Festival; Jacksons Lane, London; Jyväskylä Festival, Finland; Perigueux International Mime Festival, France; mac birmingham; Glastonbury Festival; and a wide range of regional producing theatres.”

Youngsters at WODYS wore masks with different sorts of faces, from angry and sad to young and old, happy and smiley, to innocent, drunken and fierce.

Members then had to convey the various emotions that the masks portrayed.

Assisted and encouraged by Vamos associate artist Sarah Hawkins they explained all sorts of things from how their characters were feeling to what they had had for breakfast and what mode of transport they had used to get to the workshop.

They even performed a short dance in the way they thought their characters would.

The spokesman said: “Their performances were sometimes very touching and at other times hilarious - at all times helping to stretch the youngsters acting skills and imaginations, encouraging them to think creatively and develop more confidence.”

Now WODYS is looking forward to putting new skills in practice for another season, next year.

The spokesman said: “Learning how to use such skills will help the 65 members of WODYS, aged 8 to 18, when the audition for parts in their next show - Back to the 80s.

“This which is on at Worcester’s Swan Theatre from Tuesday, July 30 to Saturday, August 35, 2019.