St Mary's School Calne

Drama and Theatre

‘... the theatre is a machine for climbing and descending the scales of meaning … a negotiation between our ordinary level and the hidden level of myth ...’  Peter Brook

Theatre fast-track

At St Mary’s our highly successful Drama Department is housed in the magnificent Delscey Burns Theatre, where all lessons, workshops and productions, great and small, take place.  Having two full time Drama teachers, supported by six peripatetic staff and an administrator, means that we can offer an impressive and full range of curricular and extra curricular work and activities.

Recent iniatives with RADA and our curriculum innovations have resulted in girls being able to take AS Level Drama and Theatre Studies early, in place of GCSE, A Level in LVI Form, and also to have the option of a unique RADA Foundation Year in UVI Form.  (We are currently working with RADA to become their centre for excellence in the West of England.)

Class Drama is taught throughout the school from Year 7, with individual or small group LAMDA examination tuition offered up to Gold Medal.  Alongside this, productions take place throughout the academic year, including a large scale school play every autumn, a Junior Drama Society play every summer, AS and A Level plays which we often take to the Edinburgh Fringe, and a whole variety of Drama festivals and competitions.  We participate in the BBC Shakespeare Schools Festival and the National Theatre Connections Programme.  In Spring 2007 we are also off to New York!

Current specifications include:-
AQA: Drama and Theatre Studies (5421, 6421) 
Edexcel: Drama and Theatre Studies (8113, 9113) 

From September 2007 all specifications will be from AQA.

All the world is our stage!

At St Mary’s Drama Department, we pride ourselves on our creativity as well as our professionalism.  No challenge is too great and, in our current three year programme of productions, we plan to celebrate our school’s 135th anniversary when we will transfer our great Autumn production to a London Theatre.  West End look out - here we come!


‘A map of the world which does not include utopia is not even worth glancing at.’ Oscar Wilde

‘In the theatre ... the search for utopia is a familiar, even necessary part of the process ...’   Richard Eyre

‘... theatre has a lot to do with putting the audience in contact with the gods... Plays are written in a vertical manner, about human aspirations ...’  Robert Lepage

‘The power of Drama is when the aesthetic is brought into play.’

‘Drama can contribute to students becoming responsible members of the school.  The subject enhances their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and makes a significant contribution to students as speakers and listeners.’

‘The Arts develop creativity.  Society needs people who are creative.  Without creativity society does not go forward.’

Miss Lilian Leadbetter (Director of Drama)