Stagecoach Story

Frustrated with juggling multiple performing arts classes for her son, Stephanie Manuel had a vision: one place where kids could sing, dance, and act under one roof. Together with David Sprigg, she made it happen—Stagecoach was born!

From the start, it wasn’t just about performance; it was about confidence. Parents saw the impact, and soon, Stagecoach schools spread across Surrey.

The Summer Showcase involves a group of students taking part in a two-week programme of rehearsals before putting on a full-scale production of a musical. Back in 1991, it was known as ‘Easy Stages’ and it was the first show bringing together students from several Stagecoach schools. Over time, our Summer Showcase evolved into a full musical production with recent productions including Grease, The Addams Family and Bring It On: The Musical.

You may or may not know that Stagecoach operates as a franchise. This means our school Principals are the owners of their businesses. They are all part of our big Stagecoach community and brand, but they also run their school/s themselves. This move towards becoming a franchise business has been a great one for Stagecoach as it has enabled us to bring our classes to even more children and young people around the world.

Becoming a franchise meant we could take Stagecoach global! And we did, and fast too! We opened Stagecoach Malta in 1998 which was followed up by several more franchises across the world over the next few years and we’ve been in these spots ever since!

It was a great honour for our students to perform for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee!

We love taking groups of students to Disneyland Paris for various events throughout the year and our iconic Dance the Dream event was launched in 2013!

By the time we reached 2017, it was time for a change. So, this was when we shared a new look for our brand. We waved goodbye to our old logo featuring a very literal stagecoach and welcomed in our snazzy new logo featuring the uplight and shield design that you will see in use today. This is also when we introduced our new brand message and mantra of ‘Creative Courage for Life’!

Stagecoach holds the record for the largest simultaneous performance of one show (multiple location) when 73 schools from the UK, Germany and Canada all delivered a performance of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at the same time!

We passed into new ownership in 2018 when Stagecoach was acquired by Trafalgar Entertainment. This was an exciting move for Stagecoach as Trafalgar Entertainment are a leading arts and entertainment brand with a range of entertainment businesses under one umbrella.