Background
Beck was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, but moved to Hampshire with her parents at an early age. She attended local schools and was introduced to the stage through school and amateur groups. She passed her Grade 8 singing examination at the age of fifteen and gained experience in both solo and ensemble singing as a founder member of the Hampshire Children's Choir and subsequently, the Hampshire County Youth Choir.
In her teens, she had many acting and singing roles at Perins School and Peter Symonds College in Winchester and was also engaged professionally to play leading roles in productions at Winchester College (Gianetta in L’élisir d’Amoré, 1999; Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, 2000 and Emily Tallentire in The Hired Man, 2001). Her first break into musical theatre occurred when she auditioned successfully at the age of 14 for the National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) of Great Britain. She performed in their production of Warchild in various English cathedrals during 1997. The following year she played the leading role of Kate Hardcastle in The Kissing Dance, a new musical written for the NYMT by Charles Hart and Howard Goodall based on Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. The show was performed to great critical acclaim at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festivals, The Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, and The Linbury Studio Theatre, Covent Garden amongst other venues. She reprised this role in the first professional production of The Kissing Dance in March 2011 at the Jermyn Street Theatre, off the West End. Her last role with the NYMT was as Guinevere in their Arthurian legend show Pendragon. Performances of this show included two tours to Japan.
Read more about this topic: Gina Beck
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