Lady Margaret School provides highly successful and well attended extra-curricular drama provisions. There are a wide range of opportunities for students to involve themselves in our thriving extra-curricular programme, including junior and senior drama clubs, regular theatre trips for all year groups and showcase evenings to celebrate our student’s hard work and talents.
House Pantomime
Each year KS3 students are given the chance to devise and perform a Christmas pantomime as part of our House Drama competition, resulting in a day of performances for all of our KS3 students; this has become a much-loved tradition. Writing, design and direction are all independently led by the girls. Recent pantomimes have included a feminist take on Cinderella and side splittingly funny adaptation of Rapunzel.
School Production
The drama department works closely with the music department in the production of an annual full school musical. Past productions have included, ‘Daisy Pulls it Off’ by Denise Deegan and ‘Little Women the Musical’, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, with book by Allan Knee. Our annual production takes place in June and tickets are available from the admin team. Our school production involves students from all year groups and we regularly have over 150 students participating. Students are given the opportunity to perform on stage or to explore production and design elements in partnership with our DT and Art departments.
Activities Week
The Drama department has run a theatrical Activities Week programme for the last two years. The week offers students the opportunity to see a series of matinee and evening productions over the course of 5 days, including trips to venues such as the historic Globe Theatre, glistening musicals on the West End, mystical open air theatres, the pioneering National Theatre along with other prestigious venues.
Students are also offered theatre-based workshop each morning, which will give you a chance to explore the diversity of theatre through hands-on activities. These have included improvisation, make-up and hair for the stage and musical theatre workshops. The girls are then able to perform a final devised performance in front of their family and friends.
In 2019 we saw a total of eight professional productions over the course of five days, alongside taking part in backstage tours of London attractions and workshops held at school.
Facilities
The Drama department is extremely fortunate to be housed in new, purpose-built accommodation. This comprises of the drama teaching room and the Busby Auditorium, which boasts a full lighting rig, black box curtains and tiered seating to accommodate up to 180; this space is used for smaller extra-curricular performances and for exam pieces. Our main production is performed in the main hall, which has a large stage, a full lighting rig and a new sound system.