Sir Nicholas returns

We are looking forward to a visit next week by Sir Nicholas Hytner, who somehow found the time and enthusiasm amid his responsibilities as Director of the National Theatre to act as Chairman of our Drama Centre Fund from 2006 to 2010. The Fund made possible the creation of our Drama Centre, opened 2 months ago.  This will be his first chance to see the project since building work started.  His last visit, with Alan Bennett and many of the cast of The History Boys, was late in 2006, and set us up for a successful campaign which has all but covered the £1.8 million cost of the rebuilding works.

Here in the Development Office we are in touch with thousands of our ex-pupils, and by no means all of them achieve particular distinction or fame.  However, many do, and it's humbling to feel that what happened to them during their time at MGS made some contribution to this.  For a neat summary of NH's achievements in the last few years, and his plans to take the National Theatre forward, click here and here.

Where did November go?

Well from a personal point of view I'm glad to see the back of November, which has been full of family illnesses, but we did round off the month with a great Robert Powell evening in the new theatre.

Robert and Liza Goddard, assisted by friends on piano and flute, presented Silver Screen, a brief history of the movies.  From silent films to Spielberg, lots of great quotations and extracts provided ample opportunities for a wide range of voices, amongst which Michael Caine was outstanding.

Robert reminisced, too, about his previous appearances on the MGS stage, including his King Lear, when he starred with Michael Wood's Cordelia.

Our evening ended with a gala supper in the Refectory, and produced more than £1,000 towards the Drama Centre Fund.  thank you, Robert and friends.

We're open!

We had a fantastic opening night of our new theatre last night, when we hosted a concert given on behalf of Life for a Life Memorial Forests, one of our partner charities, to help launch a campaign to install in Manchester a bronze statue of Chopin, presented by the Republic of Poland as a gesture of friendship to a city known for its hospitality.

It was great to see the new theatre work so well - there is plenty of hospitality space in surrounding studios for the audience at the interval, and the new seats really are comfortable.  The new stage accommodated just a wonderful pianist and soprano in the first half, but after the interval we loaded it with members of two military bands and a corps of drummers.  The acoustics were excellent, and a good time was had by all.

I've been asked by many people when 'the opening' of the new facilities is to take place.  The truth is that we are having a number of openings.  Next Tuesday, a panel of distinguished Old Mancs will conduct a Question Time event with a capacity audience comprising those of the hundreds of our donors who have been able to accept our invitation to attend to accept our thanks for their help.

On 27 November we have a performance by Robert Powell, Liza Goddard and friends which will be our first visiting professional production.  Details at http://www.mgs.org/.  Our first big student show will take place next year, when we hope that Sir Nicholas Hytner, Director of the National Theatre and Chairman of the campaign which raised the funds for the drama centre, will be able to attend.  Happy days!

New theatre opens

It's half-term, and the fiinal preparations are well underway for the MGS theatre opening next month.  As you can see below, most of the action at the moment is on and above the stage, particularly involving the installation of the stage curtain system.  If you know the theatre, you may think from this image that little has changed.  However, the thrust stage is now a permanent, but flexible structure, and the front panels can be removed to reveal a full-height orchestra pit, ideal for our modern tradition of musical theatre.  Most radically, we now have a fly-tower above the stage which will allow scenery to be lifted in and out at speed, hopefully signalling the end of tedious scene changes.

'And what of the seats?' I hear the sufferers of old cry. Well, as promised in the fundraising literature, they are now all individually upholstered seats, erasing the memory of the wooden benches we used to have.

And you will notice that the rake of the seating is much steeper.  As well as improving sightlines within the theatre, this has allowed us to build a new foyer at the back of the theatre, further enhancing the audience experience.

Just below the ceiling you can see one of the walkways installed to make the technical servicing of the theatre comprehensive and safe.  From here, light and sound can be controlled by a pupil TechCrew to the full satisfaction of H&S regulators.

We have private shows taking place on November 4 and November 9, and we have tickets available for 'The Silver Screen' on November 27, when Old Mancunian Robert Powell will bring Liza Goddard and musicians to entertain us in the space where he first learned his craft.  Tickets from the Development Office at school.

Ten Ten Ten

Dinner at The Wizard at Alderley Edge on Saturday to celebrate an amazing event and some amazing people.  Old Mancunian writer Alan Garner published his first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, 50 years ago on 10 October 1960, making 10/10/10 its 50th birthday. Remarkably, it has never been out of print.  Assisted by the wonderful voices of his fellow OM friend, Robert Powell, Alan explained the genesis of the novel, let us in on the secret of the excrutiating first-version opening, and revealed that he is currently working on a (very unusual, naturally) novel to complete the trilogy started back in the 1950s.

For more details, see http://www.weirdstone.org.uk/ and http://www.theblackdentrust.org.uk/

An elephant balancing on its trunk

One of the great advantages of working part-time now is the flexibility to arrange a few days away.  So this week my wife and I have managed to escape the rain at home and visit friends living in southern France.  There is a work link, because he is an Old Mancunian, but this wasn't work.  We enjoyed a drive through the Camargue to the coast, seeing lots of horses, few flamingoes and even fewer tourists.  The sky was reliably blue and the beaches were empty.

We admired the house our friends have had built and talked a lot about the work that remains, most of it outside in the sloping garden.  We drank the odd bottle of very good, very local wine and enjoyed the absence of emails and phone calls.  We ambled round Arles, admiring the architecture and sampling some delicious cooking from the kitchen of an internationally renowned chef.

And, yes, we spotted an elephant balancing on its trunk as we emerged from one of the most spectacularly sited underground carparks in the world, immediately outside the Palais des Papes in Avignon.  Our tour round the Palais was excellent, the rooms full of atmosphere and well, not over, explained by commentary and signs.

So, three great days and, no, it wasn't raining when we got back to Liverpool's John Lennon Airport ('Above us only sky') but it was before we got home.

Time to celebrate

After a 4-year fundraising campaign and an 18-month build, we are excitedly awaiting the official handover of our new Drama Centre at the end of this month.

Alongside the rebuilt theatre, two studios have been converted from the previous Masters’ and Prefects’ Common Rooms, and each is ideal for drama teaching within the curriculum and for rehearsals.  Studio 1 (on the site of the former PCR) is equipped with technical gantries which will allow pupils safely to learn the art of theatre lighting and sound, and the studio will be the venue for in-the-round small-scale shows.  The theatre itself also now has technical gantries, but more spectacularly still it has a high fly-tower above the re-worked stage, allowing scenery (and even actors?) to be flown in and out.  We have a full-sized orchestra pit for musicals, the rake of the theatre seating is steeper, and of course the new seats are upholstered and comfortable.  We have made changing rooms out of nearby offices, and the old Tuck Shop has been transformed into a refreshments bar.

We are having a series of opening events, starting with a ‘Thank You’ evening for our donors on 9 November, when a star-studded Old Mancunian panel will feature in an ‘Any Questions’-style evening. Invitations have gone to all who donated to the project.

On Saturday 27 November OM Robert Powell will be bringing some friends to perform a light-hearted history of cinema, Silver Screen. We shall be providing a gala supper to follow the show. Tickets will be on sale from early October via www.mgs.org or the Development Office. Very generously, Robert and his colleagues are donating the proceeds of the evening to our final fundraising push.

MGS has produced great drama over many years, with a host of old boys going on to professional fame as actors, producers and directors.  Countless more have maintained a lifetime interest in the theatre.  I think that we can confidently expect our new Drama Centre to inspire new generations to equal, if not greater, achievements.