Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts

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Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts is a drama school situated in the Wood Green area of North London. It was founded in 1945 by Peter Coxhead and Ralph Nossek as 'The Mountview Theatre Club', an amateur repertory company staging a new production for a six-day run every second week .

Among the club's achievements were Coxhead's staging of Eugene O'Neil's Mourning Becomes Electra, a production of the complete Arnold Wesker Trilogy - Chicken Soup With Barley, Roots and I'm Talking About Jerusalem directed by Peter Scott-Smith - and Buttered Both Sides, a revue written and composed by Mountview member Ted Dicks and directed by Gale Webb, which later transferred to the Fortune Theatre in London's West End.

In the early 1970s, the amateur group was ousted by premises freeholder Coxhead to allow his new commercial theatre school unimpeded access to the theatre and its ancillary facilities.

The school's courses are accredited by the National Council for Drama Training, so it is often listed amongst the "top rank" of drama schools in the UK.

The courses include three-year Acting and Musical Theatre courses as well as one-year courses for postgraduates and directing and technical theatre courses.

In 2006, Dame Judi Dench replaced Sir John Mills as president.

In 2007, the British reality television show E4 School of Performing Arts offered several would-be actors the chance to win scholarships to Mountview, Italia Conti and the ACM. Mountview's Amir Korangy appeared on the show as part of the panel.