UAL Acting for Stage & Screen students are preparing for their final school performances of 2025 which will showcase original works written, devised and performed by our students inspired by the festive season. Performances will take place on campus on Thursday 11th December and Friday 12th December. The project began with a recent trip to The Lowry in Manchester where students took part in a workshop with the acclaimed Mischief Theatre Company and saw the production A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong alongside this they have been researching different types of theatre and performance to write the productions.

A Nativity Goes Wrong 

First year students are working on A Nativity Goes Wrong, the plot centres around a charity performance of the Nativity centred on a class of year 9 students, “however, things take a turn for the worst when students forget their lines, set falls apart and actors enter in the wrong costume.” explains acting student Grace Blewitt. 

She said “Our roles are the teachers of theses students, having the challenge of controlling them. Our characters contrast each other as one is strict and aiming for the best show and for it all to be in line however the other is all for having fun and being over the top, you see this relationship and different archetypes throughout the show, including students wanting to be the best actor with the smallest role or the bored type that clearly doesn’t want to be there.”

To produce and write this show students “researched farce theatre and the art of comedy through mishaps and mistakes, we traveled to Manchester to watch A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong with our course and this gave us a taste for how we can create comedy through it. This term has been very helpful with our research, as our main subject and focus has been on farce and all areas within it.”

Grace said “it was nice to step into a director role instead of always being the actor, we also found it fun to gather ideas from the rest of the course to figure out what we can include and what would work well in this show as everyone had such great ideas. we mostly found rehearsal’s fun and exciting however there was many times we tripped up and was lost with what to do and it wasn’t looking as good as it could however we pushed through it and kept going and now looking back it was all worth it!”

Grimm Up North

Grimm up North is a Fringe Festival production that will be made up of multiple group performances. Final year student Hannah Allen-Ayre said that her group performance “is named Fairy Godmothers Grimm Night In and the audience can expect to spend a comedic time following their fairy godmother who will take them through four journeys of the Grimm tales we all know and love, with an unexpected twist! We see Rapunzel gossip at her hair appointment, Jack in therapy after his ordeal with the beanstalk, Goldilocks hosting her own cooking show and Cinderella at her hen do. In this piece we will have live music performed by Aaron Robinson who is playing our very own fairy godmother!”

The script for the production has been co-written by Hannah and fellow student Aaron Robinson she said “we have both thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with and creating the project. I play Goldilocks Ramsey who takes inspiration from Gordon Ramsey especially his angry outbursts and mannerisms which has been wonderful to play out with the script and fully embody the character.”

The students researched comedy sketches for he production, Hannah said “for this piece we not only researched the original Grimm’s Tales but also sketch shows such as SNL because that’s what our piece is based upon. One of my favourite things about having our piece resemble a sketch show is having fun creating contrasting sketches that focus in on one character and allow the audience to get to know them. One of the best moments for us when creating this piece has been the first run through because although we were still trying to figure out all the details, we got to enjoy seeing each other bring the characters we have been eagerly working on to life.”

Student Katie Bloomer said “for our production we are performing a version on Rapunzel except instead of being a long lost princess of a kingdom, she is a chav locked in a flat in Leeds and is known as Razzy, we have written the script ourselves and even adapted a song from the Disney version.The audience can expect some audience participation, a few ‘awws’ and lots oof laughs.

Katie is taking the central role “for this production, I am playing our Rapunzel, “Razzy”, she’s is a sorta clueless but curious girl, who wants an escape from her tragic life she is forced to live by her “mother”.

She continued “for the production elements of the show, we have looked heavily into foley sound, different ways to it can be used and how to use it, along side this we have reached into fringe festivals to help us try to emulate a performance that is industry standard. We have chosen to have a minimalist set design along side have live foley sounds to give the performance a Brechtarian feel. Throughout this project we have had various different challenges such as budgeting for stuff such as set, costume and props and then also other issues such as performance spaces. However I have very much enjoyed experiencing with a classical tale that I personally have grew up with and putting our own twists.”

Performances will take place on campus on the 11th & 12th December. If you are interested in studying acting at college level make sure you check out our course page here.