The Power Within was performed with conviction and passion by the young dancers. They used video and image projection as well as dance to tell stories of women overcoming oppression in various contexts – Harriet Tubman, the Suffragettes and Malala Yousafzai. The moment the young cast introduced themselves alongside Malala was deeply touching and showed how engaged the company were with their source material. While I didn't feel the modern sections book ending the meat of the piece strengthened it as a whole, this was a coherent and moving piece of dance.

Warzone told the parallel stories of a young boy fighting in WW1 and a modern teenager who has vandalised a local memorial statue. The backdrop of these stories are the boy's school learning about WW1 and putting on a production of Oh, What A Lovely War! While the three strands were overlapped in an interesting manner, with some very evocative moments, the script was confusing and a little muddled at times. There were some wonderful performances from across the cast, and the group worked together excellently as an ensemble. Dean Sherlock played his role of the primary soldier with a well-judged quiet dignity, and Mason Thomas-Downes provided an excellent comedy turn. Also worth noting was a stunning set design for both pieces – different areas were created on stage, reflecting and enhancing the journey through time essential to both pieces.

These pieces are the opening of a four year program from the Pegasus. I look forward to seeing the rest!

Pegasus Youth Theatre Companies' double bill, Warzone and The Power Within, is immensely affecting. Its thoughtful themes of how historical events and personalities impact on contemporary youth were masterly.

In the two separate pieces, the Companies marked bravery in different art forms: drama and dance.

Andy Mulligan’s superb Warzone explored the motivations behind the act of volunteering by young, underage men for the Front in 1914, and asked, ‘would they do the same in 2014?’ 15 year old Joe (assured Cosmo Tullar), much affected by his parents recent break up, desecrates a war memorial. Joe’s actions cause the soldier (earnest, decent and deserving Dean Sherlock) to crash from his pedestal – a sprawling, prone figure of the fallen. Time dissolves to allow the two direct dialogue. Both find a voice and a mutually sympathetic ear.

Yasmin Sidhwa’s direction is acute, capturing both the bang-on confident cadences of the modern classroom with the softer, elegiac notes of last century. Anusha Abbas’s Khari radiated confidence as a sassy teenager, Ryan Clune’s versatility was striking, and in Inigo Howe’s Deputy Head decency and fairness fought with an indistinct instinct for drawing the line and the fervent hope for better behaviour from his pupil.

Resonance and relevance from the past to the present was one of the production's clearest insights. The actors made us feel pity afresh. One boy volunteered for one thing only: the chance to ride a train to Dover to see the sea for the first time in his life. It was a short one, as he arrived in France under a false name, and a false age. Many soldiers fell without their loved ones ever knowing what happened to them.

In the dance piece, The Power Within, the Companies examined the principles which motivated strong women campaigners over three centuries, and celebrated theirs – and by their example - contemporary women’s on-going struggle for freedom, equality, and education throughout the world.

Abolitionist Harriet Tubman, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and education campaigner Malala Yousafzai were celebrated for their strength and conviction.

Powerful use of archive film, music soundtracks from gospel to rap and a reading by Maya Angelou of her iconic poem, I rise, enhanced the richness of the beauty and eloquence of Allan Hutson’s choreography. Alexandra Waring-Paynter (Harriet Tubman) and Isabella Lee were particularly striking. Natasha Godwin’s costumes skilfully differentiated the dancers as individuals (collars which ranged from slave shackles to lace) while using three colours to symbolise constant qualities shown by strong women through the ages.

Drawing on their own contemporary experience of strength, idealism and principles, such as campaigning groups within their schools, the actors and dancers were able to pose the most important challenge of our times: ‘what would you stand up for?’ It’s a question none of us should escape, and one I have longed to see posed in all the coverage of past historical events. Pegasus Youth Theatre has done so in a magnificent, thought provoking way.