It’s been a hectic week at Stagedoor – over the last week, our students have done four different performances of three different shows, in three different venues, with a total of over 1100 people in the combined audiences!

First up was the second year students’ production of Zero For The Young Dudes! at Chosen Hill school – we performed this hard-hitting play for the whole of year 10 at the school, as part of their PSHE programme for the year. Zero For The Young Dudes! incorporates a great many relevant contemporary issues, and asks its audience to think about the implications of political decisions made every day, on the young people who are not eligible to have a vote or a say. The play, by Alistair McDowell, takes things to the extreme – in it, everyone under the age of 21 has risen up against the adults, and their protests led to full scale war. The play is set after the war, when all the defeated children have been locked up in camps – a bizarre cross between boarding school, holiday camp and prison.

Having performed at Chosen Hill, we then packed up the set and headed back to Stagedoor HQ to rehearse with professional Musical Director Jez Francis ahead of a huge event at the Everyman for Remembrance Sunday, which we were privileged to be involved in. Our second years performed a fantastic song – Then We’ll Fight, from the musical The Battle of Boat by Ethan Lewis Maltby and Jenna Donnelly, as part of a large gala event commemorating the centenary of the end of World War 1. The whole event included professional actors, the Everyvoice choir, the Songbirds, and Everyman patron (and national treasure) Pam Ayres, as well as the Cheltenham Silver Band and the Everyman Youth Theatre. We were thrilled to take part and the second years very much enjoyed performing on the main stage at the theatre for the first time. We received some fabulous feedback!

On Tuesday, it was the first years’ turn. Their first public performance at the Everyman was a variety show – Forget Me Not, which the students had developed themselves as part of the Variety Performance module of their qualification. The show took war and peace as its theme, and was split into four parts. Part 1 was Revolution, and included a piece from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, a medley of songs from Les Miserables and a song from Hamilton. We then moved on to part 2 – The Great War. This emotive section included, amongst other things, a fantastic movement sequence to the well known World War 1 song It’s A Long Way To Tipperary, which our brilliant movement teacher Liz Warner had helped put together and refine, a beautiful performance of the war poem In Flanders Fields, an evocative sequence with real letters from and to the front, underscored by the song Take This Letter To My Mother (an idea we magpied from the recent production of On The Mend, which four of our students were involved in) and finished up with another song from The Battle of Boat. After the interval, we were in Part 3 – The World At War Again. This section included a 1940s style swing dance, a lovely movement sequence inspired by Frantic Assembly following the story of a family at war, and a scene from Goodnight Mr Tom. The final section, which focused more on our hopes for a peaceful future, included a song from the musical Hair (which was a highlight for many!) and the words of iconic speeches made by Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Barrack Obama, cross cut with some original monologues about feminism and the refugee crisis. The finale was Found/Tonight – a mash up of songs from Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton, which was original put together to support March for our Lives last March in America. The first years did an absolutely fantastic job – their show was slick, professional and hugely enjoyable. Feedback from the sold-out audience was overwhelmingly positive. It’s worth remembering that the first years have only been on the Stagedoor course for 7 weeks, and to pull together a show of such high quality, working as a real ensemble, is seriously impressive.

Finally, on Wednesday, the second years performed Zero For The Young Dudes! in the Everyman studio – another sold-out production. This production is not quite such an easy watch as Forget Me Not was – it’s probably the darkest play we’ve done so far, but we still received very positive feedback from the audience. The acting was fantastic, and as always, the students were focused and professional.

Huge congratulations to all of our students, who have worked so hard over the last few weeks to ensure that every one of these performances were of outstanding quality.

Next week, we start to head towards Christmas – we’re very grateful to Hammerpuzzle, who are doing this year’s Christmas shows in the Everyman studio, as they’re allowing us to observe rehearsals next week – this is really unusual as often theatre companies like to keep their rehearsals closed, so we are very lucky to be allowed to see the creative process in action. It’s also not long until panto season, during which our first years will be learning about Front Of House as they each take on shifts as ushers, as well as helping with workshops run by the Education and Community department.