YORK Youth Theatre's demands sound simple but are hard to meet.

"We face the eternal problem of finding plays that are challenging, not patronising and have enough parts," says Youth Theatre director Sarah Brigham.

"I looked at the NT Shell Connections plays for this year, as we normally take part in the scheme, but not one of them was right for us or good enough."

Instead, York Youth Theatre will present two established works, Mike Kenny's Dictation and Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love Of The Nightingale, in The Studio at York Theatre Royal from Thursday to Saturday at 7pm.

Each is an epic journey of passion, honour and dishonour, rooted in the pages of Greek mythology, with strong language and violence.

Mike explains the roots of Dictation. "It's based quite closely on Sophocles's Antigone: it's basically Antigone set in a comprehensive school, and it's very true to Sophocles because the setting is a single place, a single time, a single door, and a Greek chorus is ever present.

"I wrote the play two years ago for Classworks in Cambridge, who had done a similar project the year before with Edward Bond. He'd written a script called The Children, inspired by Medea."

Mike says the play, which criticises the values that prevail in the comprehensive school education system, is ideal for young performers. "I don't think Greek drama is at all dusty. The story of Antigone suits teenagers because she won't compromise. You think, 'Oh compromise a bit', but she won't."

Sarah concurs. "Myth-based Greek dramas are like blueprints for life. They travel incredibly well into modern settings," she says. "People ask why we give these plays to young people to perform but the answer is they care about these issues more than we do at our age." Wertenbaker's The Love Of The Nightingale, a story of rape, tongue removal and revenge based on Sophocles's Tereus and Ovid's Metamorphosis, was written for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986. "That makes it a bit of an undertaking for a youth theatre, but they're really passionate about the idea of honour and dishonour and believe in doing what's right," Sarah says. "They also feel that, with the exception of Dictation, the pieces written expressly for youth theatres are not real, don't have an authentic voice and use a 'street talk' that they just don't speak. It's better to work on a play with some depth, where they're not going to find answers in the first week but have to go on a journey with the director to work it through."

Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 15:45 Thursday, February 10, 2005