VIDEO: Chichester's triple threat performers talk about 15 years for the course

​It's an anniversary which is being marked with a festival of productions at the course’s home theatre, the Alexandra Theatre at the Regis Centre in Bognor, in March and May.

“I was here from the beginning. I actually came in as a freelancer when it was a foundation programme and I came in to direct The Matchgirl which was the first production.”

Karen recalls it was a time when perhaps a little persuasion was needed that musical theatre could actually be a degree: “I think that were some people who thought that perhaps it couldn't be taken seriously as a degree but for me coming in originally as a director, I brought in a team of professional people and I think now you have to realise that cultural life is just so important to all of us and to our economy. This really is a serious business! I came in as the freelancer and after some time the head of music asked me if I'd like to come on the staff and turn it into a three-year degree. So very quickly we went from being this two-year foundation course where students had to go somewhere else to top it up to being a degree to being a three-year degree in its own right, and then within two or three years we were starting to attract a lot of international students because of our high production values and the fact that we embed in our programme within the pedagogy a lot of learning and teaching.”

Back then it was extremely rare to have a musical theatre degree within a university environment. Probably now there are maybe eight to ten such courses within UK university environments – a sign of just how far ahead of the game Chichester was and just how wonderfully well it has endured: “I think that argument (about validity) has been won and we've actually expanded the musical courses on offer at the university. The triple threat is the original equal balance – acting, dancing, singing – course and in the first intake there were about 35 students. Within two or three years we turned it into a single honours with a great reputation and our numbers absolutely shot up. It became very, very competitive because we have always wanted to keep our numbers fairly low but the university saw there were other opportunities to set up other courses. The triple threat have become in effect the portal to the other programmes that we have here within the Conservatoire and within the music department. We were part of the music department but now we are part of the Conservatoire.”

Next up from the triple threat students is London Road from Thursday to Saturday, March 9 to 11. A critical sensation when it opened at The National Theatre in 2011, London Road won Best Musical at the 2011 Critics Circle Theatre Awards. Inspired by true events, Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s musical narrates the lives of a Suffolk community rebuilding its reputation after a series of neighbourhood murders. Tickets from the Regis Centre.

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