Back to RWCMD main site

Actors and Designers Get Festive Across the UK

4 December 2013

Filed Under:

Acting

If you’re heading to the theatre this Christmas, chances are there’ll be some RWCMD alumni on stage or backstage. From traditional pantomime to the RSC’s retelling of Peter Pan, here are just a few of the places you can spot our graduates treading the boards over the festive season (with a sprinkling of theatre design festive magic too).

1. She played the eponymous Little Voice and Educating Rita, now Katie Elin Salt is Snow White at the Regent Theatre, Stoke on Trent. She’s appearing alongside another graduate, Christian Patterson, who’s also directing the show.

Wendy-and-Peter-rehearsal-12-2013-541x361

2. At the RSC, Dafydd Llyr Thomas (above right in rehearsal) appears as Curly in Wendy and Peter Pan. The production has been designed by RWCMD Theatre Design graduate, Colin Richmond.

3. He’s appeared at the RSC and in Coronation Street and now Craig Gazey (below) plays an elf in the Soho Theatre’s ‘darkly funny, weird and wonderful’ musical The Night Before Christmas.

Craig Gazey24. Rosie Wyatt is also appearing at the Soho Theatre, in the love story Blink.

5. Here in Cardiff, Sherman Cymru are putting on two Christmas shows. For younger audiences, there’s Corina Pavlova And The Lion’s Roar.  It’s directed by Mared Swain (Sherman Cymru’s Welsh language associate director), along with fellow acting graduates Alun Saunders and Caitlin Richards in the cast…

6. … and for older children, The Sleeping Beauties (main image above) has Gwawr Loader and Adam Scales in the cast, Lucy Rivers composing the score and Rachael Canning designing the production.

7. Another theatre design graduate Tom Scutt designed How the Whale Became at the Royal Opera House.

8. Puppet maker Max Humphries and designer Rhys Jarman worked on The Nutcracker at The Nuffield in Southampton.  Rhys also designed the CBeebies Christmas Carol, which was recorded at the Sheffield Crucible and will be broadcast later in December.

9. Meanwhile, National Theatre Wales are heading to a spiegeltent in Cardiff Castle for Silly Kings, based on the fairy tales of Terry Jones. Remy Beasley, Hannah McPake and Sion Pritchard are all in the cast.

10. Elsewhere in Wales, Graduate Richard Tunley’s directing Gareth John Bale as Captain Hook in Peter Pan across South Wales. At the Riverfront in Newport the main cast are all RWCMD graduates – Elin Llwyd, Richard Elis and Lee Mengo. The Torch theatre has Kate Jarman, Sion Ifan and Jordan Barnarde in Aladdin.

So if you’re at the theatre over the festive season, look out for an RWCMD graduate at a venue near you. [Insert joke about shouting ‘He’s behind you!’ when you see one].