Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is a drama school in Bristol, England. The institution provides training in acting and production for careers in film, television and theatre.

BOVTS is an affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. Its higher education awards are validated by the University of the West of England, and its students graduate alongside members of UWE Bristol's Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education. It is a member of the Federation of Drama Schools.

History

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's'' Cyrano 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. Perhaps the best known 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 as Principal and Sue Wilson in the new post of Artistic Director. Paul Rummer returned in 2020 and was succeeded by Fiona Francombe, previously the director of Bristol's Bottle Yard Studios. Until the 1989 the Theatre School was part of the Bristol Old Vic Company, but it is now a financially independent organisation.

Courses

The theatre school accepts just 28 people out of approximately 2,500 applications per year for the three-year BA acting course, making it one of the most selective drama schools in the world.
Applicants are purely judged on talent alone in two rounds of intensive auditions.
It has its own premises in Clifton, bought with proceeds from the London success of ''Salad Days''.
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.

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
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