Gytha Lodge 

Writer & Director of "The Life of Lucrezia Borgia", and an actor for the performance, the lengths some people will go! This is the story of how she arrived here.

Gytha lived in Girton from the ages of 4 to 11. She put in a brief appearance at the playgroup at Cotton Hall before starting at Girton Glebe as one of only two girls in her class. For some strange reason, this didn't stop several of her early acting parts being male ones. She still has vivid memories of being a Roman Centurion one year, and the least acrobatic acrobat ever to walk the school hall in another. Furthermore, she still bears a grudge for that one year she had to play in the school orchestra instead of acting in the nativity.

Her first experience of the stage was age 5, as a bluebird in The Wizard of Oz on the Arts' Theatre Stage (she hasn't made it back onto it since). At that age, the witch exploding at the end was enough to terrify her. She moved up through the ranks, becoming in turn frightened of thunder (Marta in The Sound of Music at St. Andrew's Church); of drowning (a gossip in Noye's Fludde); of fairies (Phyllis in Iolanthe); and of being murdered every night and resurrected in the morning (Beth in Juniper's Whitening). Roughly fifty other plays provided a host of other intimidating objects and people, and more opportunities to play drunks and tarts than any girl should be expected to take up.

She only turned her hand to directing relatively recently. In sixth-form she tried a little light Pinter, and in the mid 2000's she directed a very strange piece of student drama to quite surprisingly good reviews in Varsity and TCS. One can only suppose they stumbled into the wrong auditorium.

Since then she has written and directed several productions for Girton Players, revitalising the group. In 2009 she won the top prize in the UK Drama Association’s competition, the Geoffrey Whitworth Trophy for The Funeral of Macie Loverett. In 2010 she took Otherwise to the Brighton Festival Fringe, winning best new play, this being followed by a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

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