Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
| Type | Drama school |
|---|---|
| Established | 1946 |
| Chairman | David Halton |
| Principal | Paul Rummer |
| Artistic Director | Jenny Stephens |
| Location | Bristol, England |
| Campus | Downside Road, Clifton |
| Affiliations |
Conservatoire for Dance and Drama University of the West of England |
| Website | http://www.oldvic.ac.uk/ |
The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is a theatre school in Bristol, England. Opened by Laurence Olivier in 1946, it is an affiliate of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama and an associate school of the Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education of the University of the West of England.
The School began life in October 1946, only 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. (The yard of the derelict St Nicholas School adjacent to the warehouse was still used by the Company for rehearsals of crowd scenes and stage fights as late as the early 1960s, notably for John Hale's productions of Romeo and Juliet starring the Canadian actor Paul Massie and Annette Crosbie, an alumnus 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.
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