Stage Whispers THE PQA CAMBRIDGE NEWSLETTER
2019
TWO HUGELY SUCCESSFUL
WEST END SHOWS! Annie Weathermoon growing up in Alberquirky! With an eclectic mix of musical numbers, including ‘Stick it to the man’ from ‘School of Rock’, and ‘I can do without you’ from ‘Calamity Jane’, it really was a spectacular show from start to finish! More exciting news coming up inside...
DEAR PARENTS,
There is no doubt that both our AM and PM Academies absolutely smashed it at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London this year! We were thrilled that our AM Academy was invited back to perform at the highly prestigious venue, and we were well and truly over the moon when our PM Academy was also invited to make their debut performance in the West End! May 2019 saw PQA Cambridge take over 130 students to perform at the home of ‘Phantom of the Opera’, and what a fantastic time they all had! It was our best-ever performance at the prestigious venue, and despite only working on the show for a total of 24 hours of rehearsal time, the professionalism of our students was incredible, and the performance was superb as a result! Trouble’s A-Brewin’ was the name of this year’s PQA show, which followed
THIS NEWSLETTER FEATURES MANY OF THE EXCITING EVENTS OF THE YEAR. I ALSO SEND A WEEKLY NEWSLETTER BY EMAIL EVERY WEDNESDAY EVENING WHICH CONTAINS VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGES FOR OUR STUDENTS. IF YOU ARE NOT RECEIVING THESE THEN PLEASE CONTACT ME ON:
THE NEW GENERATION OF WEEKEND DRAM
Comic Relief 2019 This year our students took part in the PQA Lots of Laughs Challenge, which saw Academies from across the nation join forces in creating stand up routines to raise money for Comic Relief! A great project to be involved in and a fantastic cause; plus we had some fun telling jokes! Visit our Facebook page to find our videos, which were all written and shot in one day!
Open-Air Shakespeare 2020! We are very excited to announce that next summer all of our students will take part in our first full-scale Shakespeare project! It will be a fully-produced open-air version of a Shakespeare play which will be abridged to 30 minutes and involve all of our students from all three age groups! Nick is very excited to get started on this as a big Comedy & Drama project for the year!
MA SCHOOLS FOR AGES 4 TO 18 YEARS
EXCEPTIONAL
TRINITY COLLEGE LONDON
RESULTS! Another year, another outstanding set of results in our exams with Trinity College London! This year we were a bit sneaky, and entered all of our students into Grade 5 exams in Musical Theatre in Production for their performance at Her Majesty’s Theatre! What is incredible is not only did we retain our 100% pass rate since beginning Trinity Exams, but EVERY SINGLE STUDENT gained a distinction in their exam! That means our students all have a Grade 5 Musical Theatre Distinction from Trinity College London! We enter our students for various exams every year, and most of the time differentiate by age, meaning our younger students work at lower grades and move up throughout the years. The ‘In Production’ exam that we took this year works a little differently, as a result we are graded on the whole performance, including all the production elements, which is why we entered everyone (even our youngest students!) into a high grade. The cost of Trinity exams are all covered by the tuition fees so it means everyone is included! Trinity College London is a highly prestigious exam board in a similar vein to graded dance or instrumental exams. Next year we will be working at differentiated grades again for age, and will be the first time we embark on a journey past grade 5 and allow some of our students to work at Grade 6 – at which point the result is even worth UCAS points! For more information about Trinity Exams, take a look at https://www.pqacademy.com/benefits/trinity-board-examinations/
PQA CAMBRIDGE
IN TWO LONDO
Last year was our most amazing year for filmmaking at PQA, with so many cinema screenings and festivals won by our amazing students! We were thrilled to be invited to the first PQA Regional Film Festival at Muswell Hill last year, where our students were treated to the Red Carpet experience and got to watch their film ‘Heart & Soul’ premiere! Heart & Soul was our first ever entry into the PQA 5-Week-Challenges and was the hot favourite to win until it got beaten to the post by our other entry ‘Extra-Curricular’! Out of all Academies nationwide, for us to hold the top spot is a fantastic credit to our students and teachers!
As a result of ‘Extra-Curricular’s success, it screened along with another of our short films ‘Murder, Piece of Cake’, at The Empire Cinema Leicester Square! Again, our students got the red carpet treatment and got to enjoy seeing their film on the HUGE screen! It was an amazing experience and worth all the hard work to get these films together. We are proud to say that The Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts is the biggest provider of Film & TV training to young people in the UK, and for PQA Cambridge’s films to continue to win awards and be screened at the top cinema in the country is a fantastic achievement! None of this would be possible if it weren’t for the dedication and hard work of our students and team, and we are continuously grateful for the support from parents when we make strange costume requests, or by working on lines at home. In addition to the above successes, we were also very proud of our PM Academy’s first ever local cinema screening at Vue in Cambridge, and the amazing news that ‘Extra-Curricular’ was also in the official selection for two external film festivals! Our film is now used across the nation as a highlight of PQA filmmaking, was screened at the Swindon Independent Film Festival, and the GUKIFF, international children’s film festival in Seoul, South Korea!
FILMS SCREENED
ON CINEMAS!
THE NEW GENERATION OF WEEKEND DRAM
OUR FIRST VISIT TO SOCIAL
THE EDINBURGH M E D I A FESTIVAL FRINGE!
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PQACambridge @PQA_Cambridge @PQA_Mikey
This year we are thrilled to be taking our 16+ students to perform at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe! The Edinburgh Festival is the biggest performing arts festival in the world, and this August, not only are we taking our students to this amazing event, we will be performing there too! This year we are performing Stephen Berkoff’s ‘The Trial’, and it is the start of a very exciting tradition for our PQA students! If you are interested in your child taking part in our Fringe Festival trip next year, please send an email to mikey@pqacademy.com and register your interest. Students will need to be 16 by August 2020, and a meeting will be held in September 2019 to go over the details of the trip.
This year JHFilm and PQA Cambridge joined forces to take part in the Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Challenge which saw Jonnie and his team write, shoot, and edit a 5-minute film featuring our students! It was an exhausting effort, but we did it! And not only was it a great film in the end, and it even made the top ten and was screened in London.
IF YOU HAVE ANY NEWS YOU WOULD LIKE TO INCLUDE IN FUTURE NEWSLETTERS PLEASE CONTACT: MIKEY@PQACADEMY.COM 07549 923 885
MA SCHOOLS FOR AGES 4 TO 18 YEARS
5 WEEK CHALLENGE
WINNERS 2018!
After the amazing success of our 5-week-film challenge win in 2017, we entered in September 2018 and smashed the competition out of the park yet again! The 5 Week Film Challenge asks students to make a creatively inventive short film in just 5 Academy sessions. Each are presented with a random theme, prop, costume and line of dialogue. Elements range from a chicken suit to a toy boat, with lines as random
as “It all stated when we switched it on”. The 5 Week Film Challenge that kicked off the new term in September has now been judged and we’re excited to announce the winner is ‘The Marvellous Adventures of Emily Mason!’ written and directed by Jonnie Howard for PQA Cambridge, starring our PM Academy’s Blue Group students!
The five week challenge is something we are very proud to be able to achieve so highly in regularly, and we will continue to enter our Academy into these amazing projects as they come up! The film is not available to the public until its premiere, when it will be screened at the PQA Film Festivals 2019 as part of the PQA Film Festival season!
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PQACambridge
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