Webber Douglas Academy Of Dramatic Art
The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, formerly the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, was a drama school, and originally a singing school, in London. It was one of the leading drama schools in Britain, and offered comprehensive training for those intending to pursue a professional performance career. During its 100-year history, the Academy produced many established actors of stage and screen, including Angela Lansbury, Penelope Keith, Julian Fellowes, Anthony Sher, Donald Sinden, Steven Berkoff, Hugh Bonneville, Helena Carroll, Minnie Driver, Amanda Root, Sue Johnston, Samantha Spiro, Andrew Scarborough, Julia Ormond, Tina Hobley and Terence Stamp.
The school was founded in London in 1926 as the Webber Douglas School of Singing, by Walter Johnstone Douglas and Amherst Webber. It was created from the singing academy founded in 1906 in Paris by Jean de Reszke. By 1932 the school had added full theatrical training to its curriculum, and it was renamed the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art. It was located at 30 Clareville St in South Kensington.
In 2006, the academy was absorbed into the Central School of Speech and Drama. Many of the academy's past alumni have formed a theatre company dedicated to keeping the original spirit of the school alive.
In 2009 the Central School of Speech and Drama renamed its Embassy Studio the Webber Douglas Studio.
Read more about Webber Douglas Academy Of Dramatic Art: Alumni
Famous quotes containing the words dramatic art, douglas, academy, dramatic and/or art:
“The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province of woman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)
“If you want to know about a man you can find out an awful lot by looking at who he married.”
—Kirk Douglas (b. 1916)
“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“As a particularly dramatic gesture, he throws wide his arms and whacks the side of the barn with the heavy cane he uses to stab at contesting bidders. With more vehemence than grammatical elegance, he calls upon the great god Caveat Emptor to witness with what niggardly stinginess these flinty sons of Scotland make cautious offers for what is beyond any question the finest animal ever beheld.”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the naïve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest.... Statesmanship ... consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)