Bedford Girls’ School once again gave spellbinding performances at the Bedford Festival of Music, Speech and Drama (7^th – 14^th March 2020).

Held at Bedford Corn Exchange, BGS entered a wealth of girls into numerous Music and Speech and Drama categories, ranging from full choirs to solo singing and orchestras to oboes. Programmes included verse-speaking, mime, Shakespeare and more.

The Bedfordshire Festival is well regarded in the local area, having been founded in 1921, and providing a showcase for talent in the amateur performing arts in the county.

There was plenty of talent on show from across the whole school, with a huge entry from Speech and Drama, consisting of over 200 girls taking part in 72 classes, resulting in girls being awarded a total of 39 1sts, 46 2nds and 42 3rds.

Our musicians entered 24 classes, with the girls being awarded seven 1sts, seven 2nds, three 3rds, three merits and three commended. The talented Bel Canto Choir claimed the Bedford Choral Society Cup in the Junior Choirs - Boys, Girls or Mixed - 19 years & under category.

In addition to the achievements throughout the week, a selection of leading performers were invited to the showpiece Gala Concert on Saturday evening. 

Audiences were wowed by the beautiful and dramatic performances from BGS pupils; Sophie Parry (Upper Sixth) performed a poem called Mirror by Sylvia Plath, which was awarded Outstanding. Ella Turner (Lower Sixth) performed an extract from Henry VI Part III by William Shakespeare and again was awarded Outstanding and Masha Ermakova (Year 11) performed a Dramatic Solo called Hello Is That You and was awarded an Outstanding.

Several of our Year 7 and Junior School girls took part in the Redford School performance of a piece called The Tale of the Trinosaur and won the Most Outstanding Junior Performance award. They then went on to be awarded the Woodfine Lousada award for the Most Outstanding Speech and Drama performance.  

Mrs Redford (Head of Speech and Drama) said: “Once again, the girls excelled in the Speech and Drama and Music classes at the Bedford Festival. For some, it was the first time they had ever performed in public, and for others it was to be their very last performance at the Festival, having taken part for the past ten years.

Despite the phenomenal number of placings, the girls continued to listen and learn from each other and the heed the expert advice given by the Adjudicators, to help to develop their skills in the future. The ethos of not being the best but doing your best was clear, as they celebrated each other’s successes whether they were winners or not.”

View the full BGS Speech and Drama results here.

View the full BGS Music results here.