We are now situated in what many will remember as Dante that way back when was the student coffee lounge and then became an isolation ward and recently a carrel unit. The entire medical centre was moved to Kemps Covert and Dante converted into a rehearsal studio in 1998 and the outer area waiting room into a Theatre Arts classroom. This is where we house the theatre library, resource centre with computers, printers, scanners, video links and generally I suppose a Green Room for tired and over worked thespians to do what they do the world over, moan about work, the director, the state of their accommodation etc etc.

Some things don't change. I still like to work with students as if they are a professional troupe, not dogmatically of course but it's important they understand the demands of performance and how to meet them successfully by working together. This aspect of the Theatre Arts syllabus, I like most of all, the company atmosphere, bringing together a disparate group and giving them the skills and techniques to manage projects and run productions for themselves. I've found it draws initiative out of young people and the willingness to set high standards. When in Edinburgh in 1997 [see below] I bumped into graduates of the course who were stage managers, lighting designers, actresses in their own plays and in the case of one American company, leading players. They had organised the productions, raised the money and ensured an audience turned up whatever slot, breakfast or midnight, they were performing in. I admire this endeavour. Performance skills are one part of the equation. Inspiring in young people initiative and co-operation is essential to support their ambitions for themselves and is something the Theatre Arts course does remarkably well. For those who have no wish to go further then many of these virtues will be important whatever path they follow, especially the capacity to work towards a common aim.

The course here at the college concentrates on the practicalities of theatre as well as giving the students a wider theoretical base. My position is that of a catalyst, directing their energies, enabling them to understand how to make their ideas work, as well as that of teacher, giving them the knowledge and the experience to see a project through. We are fortunate on campus in having the Tythe Barn Arts Centre. This is where most of our productions are staged. Students have the experience of working with professional admin and technical support; residencies are available with visiting companies and the students see their productions sandwiched between a touring regional company and, say, George Melly. This contact has determined the nature of the course here. Recently the National Theatre sent one of their Associate Directors to us fot work with the students on their most recent production, The Good Women of Sichuan. Students learn what is required to make their productions accessible to the community and receive training in the necessary technical skills, not simply ones of acting but lighting and stage design, stage management, production, admin, directing and marketing. Learning how to work closely in production teams has helped sharpen those other arts too, of communication and diplomacy.

IB Theatre Arts
The syllabus has changed recently with more emphasis on World Drama. This brought an adjustment of focus rather than whole scale changes to what we do. The four term structure breaks down into something like this;

· Masks dominate the first term starting with simple neutral faces and building to more complex half masks. I was lucky enough to find a mask maker in Venice a couple of years ago who had leather half masks at a particularly good price. It means that when students become more versatile they can study Commedia dell'Arte. I also look at mask traditions from other continents; perhaps ones based on ritual and community traditions such as the Yup'ik Eskimo ceremonies.

Masks are superb in a number of ways. Predominately they take away the students voice and those who may be self conscious about their English skills find they are on an equal footing with native speakers. However, the mask teaches students how to engage with a role through the body, through movement and stage awareness teaching basic technique as well as a host of other skills such as improvisation, interaction and projection and basic narrative approaches.

The term finishes with a devised mask performance.

· The second term brings a change of emphasis with text analysis and Stanislavski's Method of Physical Actions. This approach provides a seamless change over from the previous term simply because many of Stanislavski's basic ideas can be prepared for during the later weeks of mask work.

The second half of the term is the chance for students to put into practise what they have been learning so far, by staging their own short production but usually something presentational, something completely different in style and approach to Stanislavski in order to test their growing technique. Also this is a good chance for students to look at another aspect of World Drama by staging a scripted play from another theatrical convention.

Through out the term, students take a technical course one code per week, on lighting, rigging, plotting, sound and stage management. This term is also when the Individual Study is broached for the first time.

· The third term is when student initiative comes to the fore when the code separates into various companies, Red, White and Blue, to stage, direct, cast, budget, market, produce their own choice of play which some might take on as their Individual Study. The rehearsal period lasts all term and may be interrupted when the students work with a visiting company to the St Donat's Arts Centre which next year will be one from Japan leading to a performance with them.

· Some performance work continues in to the fourth term but mainly students are required to complete assignments, such as their Portfolio and Director's Oral during the latter stages of the course. A Research Commission into an aspect of World Drama completes the syllabus.

Students leave the course with a strong idea of how to stage productions, of the differences of theatrical style and of traditions from more than one culture and with a high degree of flexibility and initiative which are perhaps the greatest of virtues when working in the outside world. Helping to inculcate in to young people a practical imagination, an outlook that is broad and the willingness to oversee large projects and challenges is, as I see it, the value of Theatre Arts. It's a formula which should be emulated elsewhere and probably is here at Atlantic College only in the service programme.

Edinburgh Festival
In August 1997 Theatre Arts staged a production of David Mamet's Oleanna at the Garage Theatre in the third week of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with two students from the Theatre Arts course and the then technician of the Arts Centre, Jake Taylor accompanying us. I raised the funds through local and national contacts and we began rehearsing in July. Both Jack Fairweather and Alison Bond and myself gave up half our summer vacation to work on this. We were well reviewed by The Scotsman [You can happily be bored with the cutting; see below] and with an average audience of 27, although not great, is five times greater than the normal fringe audience, we could consider the whole thing a success. I chose the breakfast slot and the third week because for our first time at the festival I approached the enterprise with financial caution. The main impact however was to help increase standards on the Theatre Arts course. Both Jack and Alison returned to the college to perform and of course the new intake of students were inspired and wished to go to Edinburgh themselves. I would certainly like to repeat this. We didn't lose money and the educational benefits are immense. It's important for students to perform in as many venues as possible to increase their flexibility and professionalism and to as many types of audience outside the college so that their approach is right.

I am happy to say that enthusiasm for the performing arts both on the course and in the college is running high.

Winter Arts Festival
In December 1996 Theatre Arts set up the first Winter Arts Festival which has become a biannual event. To begin with it was to be no more than a college affair but soon mushroomed into something more complex, embracing the local village as well as the community of the Vale in three days of "jiving, jazzing and grooving" as the local paper put it. Next time there are plans to include local schools as well. The festival allows normal school routine to be suspended for the final three days of term and a change of pace to take over. In the morning and afternoon students can either sign up for a workshop with a professional artist or choose to offer one themselves in some area of competence to an outside visiting group. In the evenings, students perform in productions of their own devising. We have entertained workshop leaders across the spectrum of the arts, with visits from the National Theatre, Trestle, the New Globe and writers such as Robert Minhinnick and Gillian Clarke. Guests who have spoken in the past have included David Fanshawe and Pelham Allen the outgoing director of the Royal Opera House. Workshop leaders have offered sessions in stage combat and set design, master classes in voice, mask, mime, international dance styles and the building of computer generated large-scale paper forms in the Bradenstoke. Student shows have included stand-up comedy, drama, beat and jazz sessions, choir & orchestral concerts, rock events, poetry readings, original language productions, fireworks displays, a cailidh and carol concert. It is a happy end to the year and sends all home in a refreshed and balanced state of mind. The festival shows what an institution is capable of when pulling together, which is a fundamental virtue of any performing art. The next one is scheduled for December 2003 and will under the artistic direction of Chris Davies who has taken it over from me.

Shakespeare Festival
In Edinburgh we met Asylum Theatre Company who are based in Reading and we hatched out a project to produce a Shakespeare Festival at the college in February of 1999. They spent a week on campus performing four shows of Macbeth and four of Othello. The festival generated a great deal of excitement within the college and I marketed it outside to the Vale with a support programme of lectures, workshops and teachers' packs. It was incredibly popular and proved a lie to the old adage about neither theatre nor Shakespeare being supportable in rural Wales. Schools came from as far east as Newport, west from Carmarthen and down from Abergavenny in the north. Six shows sold out with the Friday Othello three quarter full and the Saturday half full. The Vale is a rural area and something of a cultural desert. If we want good live theatre then we normally have to travel to Brecon, Cardiff or Swansea or even Bath and London and so the response of local people was important in order to encourage us in more venturesome projects in the future.

The Festival was financed through the box office and underwritten with an Arts for All lottery grant of £4950, which I applied for in the summer of 1998. This allowed us to price tickets reasonably to attract the widest audience possible. Even so, without the lottery grant I feel the festival could have succeeded purely through box office revenue. Certainly the way forward in developing the performing arts at the college is not only to attract professional artists, actors and musicians but to integrate student involvement with them and even perhaps send the students out on tour perhaps in term time but perhaps during project week. Perhaps a really decisive step would be to set up a student/professional production company in conjunction with other schools and arts venues around Wales for co-operated projects. The funding of course would be crucial and so this is a longer term plan of mine.

What have we been up to recently?
The birthday celebrations are coming up of course next year but it only seems a short while since we were clearing after the Millennium party and the brouhaha surrounding that and the coming of Malcolm the new principal. What's planned is still in evolution so I advise you to check this space soon.

As for the Millennium it went very well. Chris Davies and myself produced a large-scale production of the Mediaeval Mysteries, adapted by Tony Harrison. Chris and I are keen to develop theatre and music and at the moment we are working on Menotti's one act opera Buffa The Telephone for performance later this term. The Mysteries took this inter relationship to a different level of integration. In the past we have tended to produce straight musicals, such as Return to the Forbidden Planet, Cabaret or Little Shop of Horrors but with the Mysteries we could cut and adapt the script to bring in a cross section of music styles, gospel, spirituals, African chant and Eastern harmonies contributing to what sounds like a curate's egg but which bedded down into a seamless blend of dramatic rhythm and musical fusion. Masks were used, shadow puppetry, mime, tableau, choreic effects, choreography and drama, a blend we both admire in good theatre. We took over the Bradenstoke for Project Week and built a large scale theatre inside, with a tri-lite lighting rig, scaffolding for the host, a stage extension and a raked auditorium. the event was massive and took no end of planning with rehearsals from September for about 8 hours a week. The value to of projects such as these it that it brings together Group 6 subjects in a manner that has not always been possible in the past although we did stage a pantomime one year, Wind in the Willows, entirely written by Theatre Arts students with music composed and arranged by music students. I don't think the birthday celebrations will be so vast simply because Colin [the old principal] was retiring at the time and we combined this with a series of other events such as a Music Fest later that month but I'm sure it will display the same level of quality and commitment from the students and youthful vigour and energy from Chris and myself - well at least from Chris.

Future plans are for more opera, certainly Purcell's The Fairy Queen, Lully/Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, a Gilbert and Sullivan and Caryl Churchill's Hotel. However, I would like to see more integrated teaching. There could be a situation whereby I might teach say Noh drama to the music students, the music teacher speaks to mine on the importance of music in Japanese theatre and the art department works with us on Eastern masks, set and costuming. Perhaps there could be provision in future syllabus reviews of Group 6 for the possibility of cross subject projects with some subjects in one group having a common core element. But this goes outside our powers to change although it would be a natural extension of an attitude of mind already latent in the approach of the arts.

What now?
If anyone wants to get in touch with me, either old students or ones thinking of coming to the college you can reach me on david.booker@uwc.net. It would be good to hear from you. Malcolm has many plans and new ideas for the college and has declared himself a supporter of the performing arts. There are new developments taking place as I write and I will update this site once things become clearer. It's never easy at the college knowing what students are coming through the doors one year to the next because without a lower school we can't always second guess our talent. Some years are thin in tenors or baritones or whatever but we have always been flexible we always have projects in mind and we have always been delighted and surprised at the level of commitment and talent that is only too ready to be tested by the most unforgiving standards of all, public performance.

May it always continue.

Dave Booker