How does a drama school fall apart overnight? The strange case of ALRA

On 4 April, without warning, an entire drama school shut down with immediate effect.

The Academy of Live & Recorded Arts (ALRA) closed its doors unceremoniously at 9 am in the morning, changing its website to just a written statement, detailing its closure.

Explanations, though, were thin on the ground. Many staff and students largely found out about the closure through Twitter.

This is the story of what happens when a drama school disappears, and what happens to all those caught in its wake.

The 4 April was the first official day of the half-term break for students. Assured there would be no one in the building at the time, ALRA closed its doors and released the statement.

In the statement, ALRA claims that the closure was due to losses made in the 2020/21 academic year and a lack of new income streams for the 2021/22 year.

The university also emailed all students saying ALRA was in the process of going into liquidation and would cease teaching. All staff were let go immediately.

“We knew ALRA’s finances hadn’t been great,” Akaash Dev Shamar, a third-year student, tells Euronews. “I’m pretty sure they stopped hiring cleaners as sometimes the building would get so messy and when this would be brought up in student council meetings, we would hardly see any action taken.”

With just one term left to go, third-year students like Akaash were left without any clear knowledge of what would happen for the rest of their degrees and the important final shows drama students prepare for.

“We would constantly be asking to see where our money was going as we pay almost £14,000 a year. It’s a lot of money and honestly, it wasn’t reflected in what we were getting.”

Budgets had been squeezed for a long time. Last year, a mass restructuring saw