WANTED. Plays with big casts and stories that appeal to young performers.

Not easy, as Jill Adamson, youth theatre education director, and Damian Cruden, artistic director, contemplated when picking this year's work for York Youth Theatre at York Theatre Royal.

For the summer-term project they settled on an old favourite.

"We had the age-old problem of finding scripts that were engaging for this age group," recalls Jill. "Well, Shakespeare has the best scripts, so we thought 'Let them use a Shakespeare script and see what they come up with'."

The result is short, sharp, modern-day interpretations of two Shakespeare comedies, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing - each under an hour long - to be presented from next Thursday to Saturday in The Studio.

Twenty members aged 11 to 13 will perform in each show, with the two groups sharing a set design by Lee Threadgold and everyone wearing white T-shirts, bleached-out denims and canvas shoes.

Ged Cooper, education liaison officer at the Theatre Royal for 2002/2003, has taken over the reins of Twelfth Night after illness forced a change of director halfway through the ten-week term, while Sally Mowbray, a project leader in Jill's youth theatre team, is in charge of Much Ado About Nothing.

Drawing inspiration from strip-cartoon versions of Shakespeare's plays, the two groups began by stripping the stories to the bare bones and building their plays from there.

Sally's production has the more modern script but Ged's production has found room for modern flourishes too.

"I've been keener to put in some of Shakespeare's text," she says. "He didn't invent the stories but he is remembered for his words, so we should use them. That said, we've got modern references like turning the ship wreck into a Tube train crash after a bomb scare."

Tickets for the 7.15pm performances cost £5 or £3.50 on 01904 623568.

Updated: 10:21 Friday, July 04, 2003