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Performing Arts and Drama

Both music and drama are hugely popular, dynamic activities at the School, enjoyed not just for the opportunities they offer for creative expression, but as enjoyable sociable activities where team-work is of the highest order. We aim to include as many boys as possible in these activities, convinced that each offers wonderful opportunities to gain self-confidence and a sense of reward. Each is very much a part of School life, therefore, and in each case there are very strong links with St Helen’s, overseen by a joint Performing Arts Committee.

Music - Read more
Music is a major, constant occupation in the School, either formally - as in major choral and orchestral concerts at Merchant Taylors’ Hall, the Barbican Centre and the Great Hall at School - or informally, - as in Music Week in the summer, which reaches a climax at Summer Serenade, or music tours to Italy and Germany, or band concerts organised by the boys.

There are outstandingly good facilities for music, which is housed in its own Centre with teaching rooms and Recital Hall. New musical technology is eagerly embraced, and there are plans for a recording studio. Music is taught throughout the School, at GCSE and at A level. A very large number of boys learn instruments, too, and in addition to the full-time staff there are some 20 instrumental teachers who are often established professionals in their own right, with much orchestral experience, and who teach all the instruments of the orchestra, as well as piano, organ, guitar and percussion. There are many ensembles and choirs. There is a Wind Band, a Concert Band, a Jazz Band, several string quartets, a Chamber Orchestra, and three School Orchestras, the senior of which performs in joint concerts with St Helen’s. There is also a very large Choral Society which includes parents and staff, a School Choir, Junior Choir and a group called ‘Plaine and Easie Voyces’ which has made recordings and makes many public appearances.

Drama - Read More
The first Head Master of Merchant Taylors’, Richard Mulcaster, wrote plays and pageants, which pupils performed at the court of Elizabeth 1st. Dramatists like Thomas Kyd and John Webster were part of the school during this period and Mulcaster himself is seen by many as the model for Shakespeare's school master Holofernes. The School enjoys a fine tradition of drama to this day. It is a busy, vibrant, enormously popular activity which always seems over-subscribed, despite the many opportunities for boys of all ages to perform.

Facilities are excellent. Major productions, such as Guys and Dolls, West Side Story and The Threepenny Opera, are performed in the Great Hall which accommodates 800. There is also a Studio Theatre, seating up to 200, where the House plays and Duologues (organised entirely by the boys), and other plays are presented. Among the latter have been memorable junior productions of Macbeth, Baron Bolligrew, Lord of the Flies; the seniors have given Accidental Death of an Anarchist, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Birthday Party. In all these, and at St Helen’s, casts include both boys and girls.

Drama is taught as a subject to junior boys, GCSE is offered as an option in the middle school and Theatre Studies is among the A level options, using the Theatre Studio for its practical element. The Studio offers flexible staging and seating, and the more technically gifted boys can acquire sophisticated skills in lighting, sound, set design and construction, and are encouraged to feel very much part of a team.