Former Pendleton Sixth Form College Student Lands His First Professional Role in the West End.
Owen Bolton, a former Pendleton Sixth Form College student, is starring in Choir of Man in London’s Leicester Square.
The performance is his first professional role since graduating from the Guildford School of Acting with a Bachelor of Arts in Musical Theatre in 2021.
Owen said: “Salford City College have a course at Pendleton Sixth Form College which has produced stars for stage and screen across the UK.”
Choir of Man isn’t a traditional musical; it doesn’t have a plot.
The musical is set in a British or Irish pub and features a working on-stage bar from which pints of beer are poured for the audience during the performance.
Instead, it has a 90-minute musical performance starring an eight-strong cast of men - who each get to tell their story by singing cover songs relevant to their lives.
Throughout the show, the cast of nine multi-instrumentalist singers perform arrangements of well-known Pop and Rock music arranged and orchestrated by the show’s Musical Supervisor Jack Blume, while dialogue takes the form of spoken word monologues written by performance poet Ben Norris.
Owen’s character is named The Beast which he believes is related to his hometown of Scholes in Wigan.
Owen added: “The Beast is a soulful character; he doesn’t say much.”
“He has a guitar and just plays to himself and gets lost in his music.”
Owen started singing when he was three after he got up to sing at his cousin’s wedding.
“I did loads of music in school and at Wigan Youth Zone then at 15, I got the lead role in the school’s (Rose Bridge High) production of School of Rock.”