Point of Contact: CYAC present their Christmas show, Advent Avenue

Contact's café-bar buzzes with the chatter of young people over sandwiches and mugs of tea. Some have just arrived from a shift at work, others from a day of lectures. But they’re not getting ready for a night out: they’re here to rehearse for Advent Avenue, Contact Young Actors Company's (CYAC) final show of 2013.

The show will peek into the lives of the characters who live on Advent Avenue, like a Christmassy Coronation Street. Creative mentor Paul Mayers won’t reveal too much, but will say it’s about saving Christmas. “It’s going to be a very filmic production,” he says, explaining, “I've taken inspiration from some of my favourite Christmas films like Gremlins, Batman Returns and Home Alone.”

Today, Mayers – a gregarious man, dressed in the director’s uniform of all black – is pointing out cities on an inflatable globe. Many of CYAC’s participants are hoping to join Contacting the World in summer 2014, an international theatre exchange project with companies in Iran, India and Jamaica – all of which feel rather distant in comparison to the encroaching Mancunian drizzle.

Like the academic year, CYAC is divided into three separate terms. Each begins with a series of workshops, culminating in an end of term production. Participants – who are selected through an application and audition process – can return for up to three terms. Mayers, who speaks with sincerity about his commitment to opening doorways for young people, emphasises that it’s not a “star academy” but instead a learning process. However, some previous participants have familiar faces, including Ayesha Gwilt (Amy Porter in BBC drama series Waterloo Road) and Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi (Emmerdale's Leyla).

“My job is to move people on to the next stage in their career,” he says. “As with other youth theatre that’s around, there’s so much that they learn about co-operation, and working with people that they would never normally socialise with.”

Although his working relationship with Contact began when the theatre relaunched in 1999, Advent Avenue is the first show that Mayers – who is also a director of Curriculum Plus, a company facilitating creative projects within schools and businesses that is supporting Advent Avenue’s production – has directed for Space 1. (When he found out, he “jumped up and down.”) He planned a theme and structure, while the characters have been developed by CYAC’s participants through a series of workshops.

Current CYAC member Lorna is a veteran, now on her third term at CYAC (she describes participating in the company’s spring show, Dystopia, as “the most amazing experience”.) For Lorna and fellow member Ross, both recent graduates, CYAC has been an exciting step towards a professional acting career. Articulate and engaging, they’re full of enthusiasm for everything they’ve experienced at Contact – and, despite fitting CYAC into their lives around work, they’re also surprisingly energetic. (During the run up to Advent Avenue, they will spend around 30 hours a week in rehearsals.)

Lorna explains the workshop process, in which they’ve learned about playing to their strengths and building confidence. “We’ve done a lot of trust exercises too,” Ross continues, “because we’ve had to build a company within two months.” The process has been intense and demanding, but there’s still been time for fun and games, he says: “We got an invitation to a party and all dressed up as different characters from a nativity. It was a bit wild! I just had to go as a sheep but Lorna’s was quite horrific.” (Lorna was the Virgin Mary, complete with doll – and fake blood.)

Lorna has found her time with CYAC to be very professional. “Youth theatre doesn't always get a good press,” she says, “because it can be seen as amateur.” Together, she and Ross enthuse about the support and opportunities they've gained from CYAC, which have flung them out of their comfort zones. Lorna has an audition coming up, while Ross hopes to travel to Tehran next spring as part of Contacting the World.

“It’s a huge commitment but it’s worth it,” he says, before heading into the rehearsal studio. “I’ve never come here thinking ‘God, I wish I didn't have this going on.’”