Learning at ASAPerforming Arts at ASA
Find your place on stage!
At All Saints’ Academy, we take pride in our ambitious and inclusive Performing Arts faculty. We believe that young people can find the voice they’ve been searching for either on stage or backstage, as part of our Performing Arts extended community.
We are blessed with a state-of-the-art, purpose-built Drama Studio that extends onto the main Cotswold Hall auditorium. We have a full professional lighting rig that lights the auditorium and more intimate studio settings, alongside raised audience tier seating that accommodates 220. Giant canvases of academy students flourishing on stage fill the studios and reflect the great pride and passion our academy has for storytelling on-stage. Combine our industry-based setting with our specialist teachers and production team, and the door is open for huge growth and success in the Performing Arts from Year 7.
Industry-based experiences we offer
We believe in shaping the future leaders of the world by providing them with endless professional opportunities both inside and outside the classroom. We host a whole-academy production each year that includes over 220 students as part of the production company. The high standard of our productions has given us quite a reputation in Gloucestershire, and our sell-out shows welcome hundreds of audience members year after year.
The National Shakespeare Schools Festival
Bi-annually, we take a professional company of 35 students to the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury to perform in an industry setting. We hold interviews for the Stage Manager position every show and take our creative approach to adapting texts and ‘shaking up Shakespeare’ very seriously. Students from Year 10 to 13 are invited to this once-in-a-lifetime collaborative experience to work together to transform well-known plays from page to stage. Our unique selling point is the modern-day twist that we feed in to each production we enter.
Previous Shakespeare Schools Festival entries include:
- Much Ado About Nothing meets the Moulin Rouge
- Romeo and Juliet meets the Peaky Blinders
- Macbeth meets James Bond and Casino Royale
- Midsummer Night's Dream meets Glastonbury and the Inbetweeners
Previously, we have taken our thriving Shakespeare performances to more local stages to open the ‘No Child Left Behind’ festival, as requested by our Lord Mayor.
Many students who take part in this say it is a highlight of their academic career and go on to excel in the arts, or, as future leaders, capable of thriving in high-pressure experiences.
Whole-Academy Productions
Our ever-growing annual whole-academy production continues to attract great attention year after year. This experience is open to all students from Year 7 to 13, and students with all abilities are encouraged to take part as either cast or crew.
Last year, we were recognised for our ambitious approach to musical productions as we were selected as the winners of the nationwide ‘Love is an open door’ competition. Selected by Music Theatre International and Disney, All Saints’ Academy were chosen as the West Regional Premiere School to be entrusted with the rights for the full West End adaptation of Frozen. Having had almost a thousand entries, we were delighted to be recognised for our commitment to the arts. The ‘love is an open door’ ethos reflected our core mission of finding a place on stage (or off stage) for all students and helping them to find their true talents.
Our previous productions include:
- 2026 – Aladdin
- 2025 – Frozen – West Regional Premiere School Winners
- 2024 – The Little Mermaid
- 2023 – We Will Rock You
- 2021 – Into the Woods
- 2020 – Mary Poppins
- 2019 – Les Misérables
- 2018 – Beauty and the Beast
- 2017 – Loserville
- 2016 – Little Shop of Horrors
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama partnership
We are delighted to work with construction and design students from the prestigious Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama BA (Hons) Design for Performance and Scenic Construction courses. RWCMD students gain professional experience through having production meetings with our academy production team, cast and crew. The two organisations work together to create a set design that reflects the artistic vision of the design students and enables them to see their final work in action as our Academy students bring their transformative stage designs to life.
We are exceptionally proud of our collaboration with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and since working with them, we have raised student aspiration, resulting in 40% of our GCSE Drama students specialising in Set Design for their exam course. We continue to achieve impressive outcomes for Set Design at GCSE, with our design candidates’ results being some of the best in the country year after year.