About the School
The Manchester School of Theatre was founded in 1970 at what was the Manchester Polytechnic and is now it is a part of the Manchester Metropolitan University. We are a small school with currently only 3 courses: BA (Hons) Acting, BA (Hons) Drama and Contemporary Performance and MA Contemporary Performance.
The BA (Hons) Acting programme is a leading actor training programme based in the heart of Manchester. We are led by a small core team of specialist and highly experienced directors, teachers, and practitioners, and we have an outstanding reputation for training actors with the skills necessary for a successful career in film, television, radio, and stage. We recently came 4th in the Guardian League Table for all acting schools and drama courses in the UK.
Notable graduates of the Acting Programme include: Julie Walters, Zawe Ashton, John Bradley-West, Steeve Coogan, Bernard Hill, Elliot Knight, Sarah Amankwah, Pippa Nixon, Graeme Hawley and many others.
Our production of LINDA features third year actors and is directed by Programme Leader and Head of Acting, David Salter.
LINDA
LINDA is a play about being invisible.
Linda herself, a senior brand manager at a cosmetics company, is fifty–five, ‘an award-winning businesswoman, happily married with two beautiful daughters and still fits into the same size ten dress suit she did fifteen years ago’.
But in a short space of time, her life implodes: she comes home to find her husband sleeping with a younger woman, her daughters turn on her and she loses her job. “Old for a woman means worthless. Invisible. Vanishing.”
And at the same time her daughter, Alice, spends her whole time in a skunk onesie in order to stay invisible: “when I wear this, they don’t see me anymore. People don’t see a young woman and when men don’t see a young woman, they don’t feel the need to pass comment. They might look but I know they’re looking at the skunk. Not me. When I wear this, I become invisible”.
Things are further complicated when Alice discovers that a girl who years ago sent explicit images of her around school now works for her mum. Most of the action moves between Linda’s office and the family kitchen at home.
Author: Penelope Skinner
Director: David Salter
Stage design: Frankie Gerrard
Light design: Tracey Gibbs
Costume design: Frankie Gerrard
Choreography: Fight: Kaitlin Howard
Production: Richard Walker
Cast:
Frankie Lipman
Maia Perry
Heather Campbell-Fergusson
Ella Ironside
Yasmin Connolly
Andrew Halstein
Jimmy Roberts
Tomas Azocar-Nevin
