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The Lytham Academy of Theatre Arts (LATA) is a British theatre group located in Lytham, Lancashire.
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι.
Lancashire is a ceremonial county in North West England. The administrative centre is Preston. The county has a population of 1,449,300 and an area of 1,189 square miles (3,080 km2). People from Lancashire are known as Lancastrians.
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The Lytham Academy of Theatre Arts formed in 1994 is a society open to anyone aged 10–18 years old. They perform shows every November in the main theatre of Lytham, Lowther Pavilion.
Productions performed by LATA have included The Vackees, Half a Sixpence , Dracula Spectacula, Barnum , West Side Story , Pendragon, Oklahoma! , Me and My Girl , Copacabana , Oliver! , and Meet Me in St. Louis . Their most recent production of Les Misérables is their most successful show to date, with all 5 performances sold out, and standing ovations after each. They also reportedly broke all box office records at the Pavilion with the show, and had the highest selling matinée performance there, ever.
Half a Sixpence is a musical comedy based on the 1905 novel Kipps by H. G. Wells, with music and lyrics by David Heneker and book by Beverley Cross. It was written as a vehicle for British pop star Tommy Steele.
Barnum is an American musical with a book by Mark Bramble, lyrics by Michael Stewart, and music by Cy Coleman. It is based on the life of showman P. T. Barnum, covering the period from 1835 through 1880 in America and major cities of the world where Barnum took his performing companies. The production combines elements of traditional musical theater with the spectacle of the circus. The characters include jugglers, trapeze artists and clowns, as well as such real-life personalities as Jenny Lind and General Tom Thumb.
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by the team of composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in farm country outside the town of Claremore, Indian Territory, in 1906, it tells the story of farm girl Laurey Williams and her courtship by two rival suitors, cowboy Curly McLain and the sinister and frightening farmhand Jud Fry. A secondary romance concerns cowboy Will Parker and his flirtatious fiancée, Ado Annie.
The society is associated with NODA (National Operatic and Dramatic Association), [1] from whom LATA have won many awards for individual and group performances. They have won the Best Overall Youth Production award twice, for Barnum and West Side Story.
NODA has a membership of 2500 amateur theatre groups and 1000 individual enthusiasts throughout the UK, staging musicals, operas, plays, concerts and pantomimes in a wide variety of performing venues, ranging from the country's leading professional theatres to tiny village halls.
The group began as a youth section of the group Lytham Amateur Operatic Society (LAOS) but recently LATA became a separate entity. Many of LATA's past members have gone on to drama schools and stage productions all over the country. [2]
