FORMER GOVERNOR AND FACULTY MEMBER GEORGE HALL (1925 – 2026) REMEMBERED

Everyone at BADA was deeply saddened to learn of the recent passing of George Hall, long-time Governor and Faculty member. Former BADA Midsummer in Oxford Faculty member and BADA friend and advocate, Linda Gates, shares some memories of George and his ongoing impact on actor training.

George Hall and BADA

George Hall joined the faculty at the BADA Midsummer in Oxford program when it first began under the direction of Tony Branch and Carolyn Sands in 1984 at Balliol College, Oxford.  At that time George was also director of the acting course at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (Central) in London and afterwars taught at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Shortly afterwards he joined the faculty at the Royal Academy of Music where he was a member of its Musical Theatre department, teaching his last class on Zoom shortly before his death at age 101. George was also the only British members of the faculty of the International Cabaret Conference at Yale University where he taught with a cohort of American music theatre professionals every summer for many years.

I first met George in 1974 when  he was the Guest Speaker at the American Theatre Conference in Washington DC. I’ll never forget his wonderful speech about ‘what was right’ about the American theater in which he encouraged American acting programs to embrace our unique theatre art form – the musical theatre.  At that time it wasn’t taught in many top drama schools, and we were forbidden to do musicals when I was at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon).  Under George Hall’s direction Central was one of the first British drama schools to introduce singing as part of the program for all the students. At the end of the final third year all the Central students had a chance to be cast  in a musical as well as a classic play. As one of the Americans who thought they couldn’t sing and was afraid of music theatre George Hall changed my life.

At BADA, which was founded to enable students from around the world to study classical theatre with leading actors and directors from the British theatre, George introduced the Entertainment Evening for which he directed the students in singing, arranged their music, played the piano and encouraged the students to use their acting skills to entertain an enthusiastic audience of their peers. One of George’s key words was ‘entertainment’ believing that it was a performer’s job  to see that the audience had a good time. It was that combination of love and respect for both classical training in Shakespeare as well as Musical Theatre techniques which made working with George Hall such a life-changing experience for so many students.  In addition to the Entertainment Evening, George’s  Shakespeare class’s performance on the final day at BADA was always as skillfully presented as his musical direction.

George loved working with the students at BADA every summer and also served on the Board of Governors for many years helping to shape BADA’s future.  I hope that the principles of actor training that George Hall demonstrated will be reflected at BADA for years to come.

Linda Gates, Head of Voice, Department of Theater, Northwestern University
was introduced by George Hall, to Tony Branch the Director of BADA and joined Midsummer at Oxford  faculty at Oxford, teaching from 1993 until 2012.  She also strongly supported BADA being accepted as the only British Theatre program in Study Abroad, Northwestern University.

For more on George’s life and career, read ITV’s feature from last year marking George’s centenary: Laurence Olivier’s former voice coach George Hall is UK’s ‘oldest’ podcaster at 100

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Photos:

1. George at Midsummer in Oxford 1998, directing a small chorus in “We’ll Meet Tomorrow” from Titanic: The Musical; photo by Giles Miller (MIO ’98)

2. Exceprt from the MIO 1998 group photo – George, standing in the back row, 5th from the left; Linda seated in the middle row, 4th from the right.