Courses
The theatre school only accepts 12 people out of some 2500 applications a 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 others' 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 a number of local performance venues, including the Redgrave Theatre at Clifton College (named after the actor Sir Michael Redgrave, an old boy of the College) and the Bristol Old Vic theatre complex, including the Theatre Royal, New Vic Studio and The Basement. It also takes productions on tour to various 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. The school also has a scenic workshop in Bedminster, South Bristol used by the technical courses.
The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, as its name suggests, is not simply a school for actors. It provides comprehensive training courses for all theatre, radio, film, and television professionals and 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. Among the most notable of the many distinguished actors on the School's list of alumni are the Academy Award winners Daniel Day-Lewis and Jeremy Irons and multiple Academy Award nominees Miranda Richardson and Pete Postlethwaite.
Read more about this topic: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
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