Theatre Performances

Jim Cartwright's Road

Wednesday 9 & Friday 11 February, 19.30

'Your journey will be worth every penny and every minute, and it might just take you places you never even knew existed.'  The Stage 2009

First-year students in Theatre Studies will be tackling Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one of the most challenging and rewarding plays in the English canon.

The party’s tonight. An elegant affair to mark the long loose ends of a life. But that’s for later. There’s a day to get through first.

Presented by MA Acting and Musical Theatre Graduates

note: Matinee at 14.30 Saturday 22 October

note: Matinee 14.30 Saturday 5 November

note: Matinee at 14.30 Saturday 19 November

note: Matinee at 14.30 Saturday 26 November

Don’t miss your chance to see this European company as they moor up at the University’s PATS Studio.

note: matinee 14:30 Saturday 10 December [no performance Sunday 11 Dec]

Based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling"

Please join us for an extra special Christmas Show to celebrate the new School of Arts, featuring students from Dance, Film, Theatre, Music and Sound Recording, and the Guildford School of Acting.

Matinee: Saturday 11 February at 14.30

Matinee: Saturday 25 February at 14.30

Theatre Unlimited presents Stalin's Favourite

Theatre Unlimited presents Defying Hitler

Matinee: Saturday 31 March at 14.30

The 2012 GSA Singers bring you a selection of songs from musical theatre and beyond...

Graduating students for the Musical Theatre course perform an entertaining selection of scenes and songs.

Graduating students from the Acting degree course perform an entertaining selection of scenes and songs.

This play is an enduring statement about the experience of the Continent's shell-shocked soldiers after the Great War.

This comedy traces the sexual awakening of three schoolgirls, ironically all called Mary, growing up in London in the late 1950s.

An age old theory says that everyone on the planet is linked to one another by six steps or less and that theory is put to the test in John Guare's Olivier award-winning play.

Join us in this celebration of bright ideas, leading to practice and design that really makes us think.

Something is waiting around the next corner, a thing of beauty, memory, an event, a shadow.

Enter these enchanted woods you who dare...

East meets West head-on in this hilarious 1940s-style updating of the perennial Gilbert and Sullivan classic.

Abandoned by her mother, married five times, a baronet's mistress, a plantation owner and a professional thief... Moll Flanders is a woman to watch.

Set in 1959, The Producers tells the story of a down-on-his-luck Broadway producer, Max Bialystock, and a nerdy, young accountant, Leo Bloom, who concoct a scheme to raise thousands of dollars from backers and then put on a flop of a show.

Ten youth drama groups from across Surrey come together to perform their own work devised from the Olympic values - respect, inspiration, excellence, courage, determination, equality and friendship.

GSA Foundation students present The Big Book For Girls

Directed by Pete Harris

Trainee Movement Director by Alice Robinson

One of Sondheim's earliest works set in 1929. Gene, a lowly Wall Street broker, has dreams of the exciting society life to be found in Manhattan. He and his less ambitious, middle-class, bachelor friends have no Saturday night dates on the horizon so Gene gatecrashes a party meeting Helen.

GSA Foundation students present Seussical

Direction and choreography by Katie Beard

Assistant Chorography – Felicity Butler   

Assistant Director - Joe Parsons

A musical about a dance-hall hostess named Charity Hope Valentine who, as one of her colleagues observes, runs her heart like a hotel: "You got guys checking in and out all the time." But all Charity really wants is to be loved.

Saturday School students showcase their talents in a 'storybook show' featuring song, dance and acting skills.

Graduating students from the Musical Theatre and Acting postgraduate courses perform an entertaining selection of scenes and songs.

The Ethics of Progress is a mind-melting, jargon free, whistle-stop tour of leading edge Quantum Physics, delivered with warmth, wit and charm by Unlimited Theatre’s Artistic Director Jon Spooner.

Franklin Shepard, once a talented composer of Broadway musicals, has abandoned his friends and his songwriting career to become a producer of Hollywood flicks. We begin at the height of his Hollywood fame and move back in time, showing snapshots of the most important moments in Frank’s life.

Originally written as a play, this comedy has the dialogue in the Cockney dialect with much rhyming slang and thieves’ cant. A celebration of an idealised East End and Soho bohemian lifestyle at the end of the 1950s, as knocking shops and coffee shops teemed with ponces, doxies, molls, spivs, gamblers and bent coppers: even the Kray Brothers make a prophetic appearance.

Expect a fresh new dose of Rannel’s trademark hilarious Hip-Hop comedy theatre full of music, physical set pieces and jaw dropping skills with a futuristic twist...

Dickens, the great social reformer, here enjoys a spirited outing in this fast-paced 1950s set adaptation accompanied by live ‘Skiffle’ music.

The Gut Girls of Victorian London are a rowdy bunch – with language that would stagger a horse and muscles that could floor a man. They spend their days knee deep in blood and entrails in the freezing, contaminated gutting shed, lifting carcasses twice their size. But they earn in a week what a girl in service earns in a year.  In the pubs and music halls of Deptford they are notorious for loud laughter, outrageous hats and wearing no knickers. No man would touch them with a barge pole.    

The show tells the story of the upstanding, young Edwin Drood who mysteriously disappears and is presumably murdered. But who did it? There are so many names in the frame and the audience gets to decide!

Winner of 6 Olivier Awards, this musical satirizes America’s trash TV culture taking a raucously irreverent look at religion, sexuality and popular culture. Based on the notorious TV talk show of the same name, this musical is an audacious and scandalous, yet ultimately moral and challenging show that’s recommended to anyone who can accept the odd dose of outrage in their lives.

This production is not recommended for anyone under 16 years.

A modern day musical theatre addict known simply as ‘Man in Chair’ drops the needle on his favourite LP. From the crackle of his hi-fi, the uproariously funny 1928 musical magically bursts to life on stage, telling the tale of a pampered Broadway starlet who wants to give up show business to get married. His infectious love of The Drowsy Chaperone speaks to anyone who has ever been transported by the theatre.

Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of passion and violence has been adapted and produced for a schools audience.

Fans of the Broadway songwriting duo Fred Ebb and John Kander won’t want to miss The World Goes Round, an engaging musical revue embracing musicals from Chicago to Funny Girl, from New York, New York to Kiss of the Spiderwoman. GSA brings you the best of this important Broadway song-writing team in an evening of music offering a seamless, uninterrupted roller-coaster ride from beginning to end.

The 2013 GSA Singers present their annual ‘Electric’ concerts. These highly renowned performers are back for just two performances and will be delighting audiences with songs from modern and traditional musicals, popular music featuring some well known favourites and lesser known gems.

This dramatic reconstruction, based on the transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, was originally produced at the Tricycle Theatre in London. Black teenager Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in a racist attack by a gang of white youths in Eltham, South-East London in 1993. The police investigation failed to provide sufficient evidence to convict at the time, and the public inquiry into the investigation caused a national outcry when it found that the police force was guilty of ‘institutionalised racism’. 

Legendary songwriting duo Leiber and Stoller virtually invented rock ‘n’ roll and their songs provide the basis for an electrifying entertainment that illuminates a golden age of American culture, in an idealised 50s setting.

The last seven days in the life of Jesus of Nazareth told from the point of view of Judas Iscariot, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's masterpiece was their first professionally produced musical, heralding the beginning of two careers that would change the British musical forever. It has since been produced in 42 countries and become a modern classic.

"17 scenes on a woman - Anne - who may be a terrorist on the run, or an artist who has turned her suicide attempts into her art, or a traveller who has her photo taken by millionaires'    swimming pools and in slums, or a woman whose children have been slaughtered in civil war, or even a child herself." - The Guardian

GSA’s graduating BA Musical Theatre students offer the unique chance to see them performing a showcase of their work as they launch into their professional careers. 

A theatrical treat featuring songs, dance and drama.

By Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project.

On October the 7th, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of brutality and hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard's death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of Laramie the event was deeply personal, and it is their voices we hear in this powerful and stunningly thought provoking piece of theatre. "The Laramie Project" explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable

Based on the Myths of Ovid. Written and originally directed by Mary Zimmerman.

The players enact Zimmerman's adaptations of Ovid's tales, juxtaposing the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image. The tone of the drama likewise echoes the themes of change and contrast, from the humour of Phaeton's therapy session to the tragedy of Midas and his daughter.

Please note: this show contains nudity: there is no age restriction, parental discretion is advised

Georg and Amalia, two feuding clerks in a European parfumerie during the 1930's, secretly find solace in their anonymous romantic pen pals, little knowing who their respective correspondents really are. Funny, intelligent, honest and sentimental, this romantic comedy has an endearing innocence and touch of old world elegance and nostalgia, yet is as universal and relevant as ever in this age of internet romances.
An intimate and touching show, this heart-warming story is considered by many to be the most charming musical ever written.

This summer, come and join us for our Theatre Studies Festival in the Ivy Arts Centre. Many of the students are taking part in a diverse range of performances. See below for more information about what is on offer….

Following her husband’s funeral, powerful matriarch Bernarda Alba decrees to her five daughters that the household will enter a period of eight years mourning. The only one it seems will escape this fate is the eldest daughter, Angustias, who is already betrothed to the village’s most eligible bachelor.

In the strict confines of the house, jealousy and sexuality rise to the surface. As Bernarda’s oppression of her daughters increases it is more than the girls’ liberty that is in danger.

Life in small-town Bomont is peaceful until City boy, Ren, arrives. Breaking every taboo, Ren brings dance back to the heart of a town held back by the memory of a tragedy. GSA graduates bring yet another breath-taking musical experience to the Yvonne Arnaud stage.

Water Babies is a brand new stage musical, adapted from Michael Robson's screenplay for the 1978 feature film "The Water Babies", which in turn was adapted from Charles Kingsley's 1863 novel, "The Water Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby" .

With Schwartz’s 1970’s pop style score and Fosse’s vision Pippin offers a surreal musical experience telling the story of a young prince on a death-defying journey to find meaning in his existence. Will he choose a happy but simple life? Or will he risk everything for a singular flash of glory?

GSA Saturday School students present their annual revue.  An all singing, all dancing and all acting tribute to the movies!