The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (BOVTS) is a drama school in Bristol, England. The institution provides training in acting and production for careers in film, television and theatre.
The School opened in October 1946, eight months after the founding of its parent Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company, in a room above a fruit merchant's warehouse in the Rackhay near the stage door of the Theatre Royal, with support from Sir Laurence Olivier. (The yard of the derelict St Nicholas School, next to the warehouse, was still used by the Company for rehearsals of crowd scenes and stage fights as late as the early 1960s, such as for John Hale's productions of Romeo and Juliet starring the Canadian actor Paul Massie and Annette Crosbie, a former student of the School, and Rostand'sCyrano de Bergerac with Peter Wyngarde. Students from the Theatre School frequently played in these crowd scenes and fights.)
The School continued in these premises for eight years because of the Old Vic's lack of funds in the post-war decade until 1954 when the Company produced a small-scale end-of season topical musical for the entertainment of regular patrons and to allow the actors to 'let their hair down' after a season of mainly serious productions.
This musical, Salad Days by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds, proved very popular with Bristol audiences and was subsequently transferred to London's West End where it was an instant hit and played for more than four years, making it the longest running production in West End history at the time. £7,000 from the Salad Days profits – a large sum in those days— was given to the School towards the purchase and conversion of two large adjoining Victorian villas at 1 and 2 Downside Road in Clifton. In 1995, the enduring benefit to students of that donation was formally recognised when a new custom-built dance and movement studio in the School's back garden was named the Slade/Reynolds Studio.
Many members of the theatrical profession have taught at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. This included was Rudi Shelly, who joined the teaching staff only two weeks after the School opened in 1946 and was still working into his nineties. Alumni from around the world gathered in Bristol for his funeral at which the eulogy was delivered by alumna Stephanie Cole. Apart from students of the School, over the years many established actors from around the world sought out Rudi Shelly's master classes when visiting or working in England.
At the time of the School's move to its current premises in Downside Road, Clifton, in 1956, the Principal was Duncan (Bill) Ross, who had succeeded the first Principal, Edward Stanley in 1954. After guiding the School through seven difficult years that are nonetheless still regarded by his former students as a golden age, Ross left in late 1961 to take up a teaching post in the USA. Soon after the departure of this much-loved principal, other key staff members resigned, including Daphne Heard and Maggie Collins, and Paula Gwyn-Davies, the School Secretary.
After a short interregnum under the actor Richard Ainley, in 1963 the post of Principal was taken by Nat Brenner, a distinguished actor and theatre technician and, at that time, general manager of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre. Brenner's stewardship was regarded by students of the time as another golden age. He remained in the post until 1980, when he was succeeded by Christopher Denys, who retired in the summer of 2007 to be replaced by Paul Rummer[4] as Principal and Sue Wilson in the new post of Artistic Director. Paul Rummer retired in 2020 and was succeeded by Fiona Francombe, previously the director of Bristol's Bottle Yard Studios. Until 1989 the Theatre School was part of the Bristol Old Vic Company, but it is now a financially independent organisation.[5]
Courses
The theatre school accepts just 28 people out of approximately 2,500 applications per year for the three-year BA acting course,[6] making it one of the most selective drama schools in the world.[6] Applicants are judged purely on talent in two rounds of intensive auditions.[6] It has its own premises in Clifton, bought with proceeds from the London success of Salad Days.[4] It previously had working links with the Drama Department of the University of Bristol, which still holds many papers of the Theatre School in its Theatre Collection. For many years it presented regular student productions in the Department's experimental Drama Studio converted from an indoor tennis court off a corridor in the Wills Memorial Building behind the University's Bell Tower at the top of Bristol's fashionable Park Street. Students from the School and the Drama Department shared many of each other's formal lectures and a number of the Department's graduates went on to continue their studies as full-time students at the School.
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
Having struggled with limited resources until the 1960s, the School now has access to several local performance venues, including the Redgrave Theatre at Clifton College (named after the actor Sir Michael Redgrave, an old boy of the College) the Bristol Old Vic theatre complex, including the Theatre Royal, Weston Studio and Circomedia in Portland Square. It also takes productions on tour to locations in the West Country, a tradition dating back to the 1950s when for several years students moved to Dartington Hall in South Devon for two weeks each spring where they rehearsed and presented a public production in the Barn Theatre. The School was able to use broadcasting studio facilities at the University Drama Studio for radio drama training in the 1950s and also ran occasional courses in conjunction with the BBC at their Bristol Studios in Whiteladies Road. In 2002, the Theatre School bought the former BBC Christchurch radio studios in Clifton and has further developed the facilities there which include sound studios and sound and video editing suites which are used by students and also by music and media industry clients.[7] The school has scenic workshops in Bedminster used by the technical courses.
As well as actors, the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School also provides comprehensive training courses for all theatre, radio, film, and television professionals.
Its graduates are to be found in key positions as actors, directors, set designers, costumer designers, lighting designers and stage and company managers throughout the world.
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a music and drama school located in the City of London, England. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz along with drama and production arts. The school has students from over seventy countries. It was ranked first in both the Guardian's 2022 League Table for Music and the Complete University Guide's 2023 Arts, Drama and Music league table. It is also ranked the fifth university in the world for performing arts in the 2024 QS World University Rankings.
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE was an English actor and filmmaker. Beginning his career in theatre, he first appeared in the West End in 1937. He made his film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938.
Clifton College is a public school in the city of Bristol in South West England, founded in 1862 and offering both boarding and day school for pupils aged 13–18. In its early years, unlike most contemporary public schools, it emphasised science rather than classics in the curriculum, and was less concerned with social elitism, for example by admitting day-boys on equal terms and providing a dedicated boarding house for Jewish boys, called Polack's House. Having linked its General Studies classes with Badminton School, it admitted girls to every year group in 1987, and was the first of the traditional boys' public schools to become fully coeducational. Polack's House closed in 2005 but a scholarship fund open to Jewish candidates still exists. Clifton College is one of the original 26 English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Yearbook of 1889.
Bristol Old Vic is a British theatre company based at the Theatre Royal, Bristol. The present company was established in 1946 as an offshoot of the Old Vic in London. It is associated with the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which became a financially independent organisation in the 1990s. Bristol Old Vic runs a Young Company for those aged 7–25.
Salad Days is a musical with music by Julian Slade, and with book and lyrics by Dorothy Reynolds and Julian Slade. The musical was initially performed in 1954 in the UK in Bristol and then in the West End, where it ran for 2,283 performances.
The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) is a drama school located in Hammersmith, London. It is the oldest specialist drama school in the British Isles and a founding member of the Federation of Drama Schools. The institution is ranked 6th in the world by The Hollywood Reporter's annual list of the 25 top drama schools and is currently ranked as the top UK drama school for student satisfaction according to the 2024 National Student Survey.
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Follow That Girl is a musical adapted by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds from their original Bristol Old Vic production Christmas in King Street. The story centers on a girl named Victoria Gilchrist, whose parents want her to marry one of two businessmen. She objects and runs away. Her capture after a long chase by a policeman, Tom, leads to romance and finally marriage to him. The original production contained many topical and local Bristol references — the heroine Victoria was named after the Bristol University Students Union building — but most of these were replaced when the show was revamped for its West End production.
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Richard Negri was a British theatre director and designer.
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