John Clark AM
Actors Benevolent Fund is deeply saddened by the great passing of John Clark AM who guided NIDA from 1964 to 2004.
In that time many of our most prominent and successful actors, directors, designers and technicians received their training at NIDA.
When John took up the Directorship of NIDA, the school was housed in three dilapidated buildings that were unbearably hot in summer, inexcusably cold in winter and occasionally subject to bird life. There was a two year acting course and a two year production course.
John, working with the remarkable and indefatigable Elizabeth Butcher, transformed the humble beginnings into a brilliant new building housing four theatres including The Parade Theatre, nine rehearsal rooms, a film and television studio, scenery, properties and costume workshops and a large library. Seven courses were joined by a Playwrights Studio, NIDA Open and NIDA Corporate.
NIDA graduates were national and international luminaries. John and Elizabeth had transformed NIDA into one of the world’s great drama schools.
John Richard James Clark AM was born in Hobart on 30 October 1932. He was educated at the University of Tasmania. ‘It was a small community,’ he remembers, ‘and everyone knew everyone else. The staff and students worked closely together.’ This, it turns out was the model he adopted for NIDA.
Clark’s first intention was to be an archaeologist, but somehow, in 1956, he finished up studying theatre at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and at Bristol University – where he not only designed the set for the first production of Harold Pinter’s play The Room, but met his wife, Henrietta, a future television producer. Back in Tasmania, he made his debut as a director with a production of Death of a Salesman for the Hobart Repertory Theatre Society in 1959. This led to job offers from the Melbourne Theatre Company, the ABC, and the newly-established National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. NIDA won.
From 1959 to 1968 Clark tutored in theatre history at NIDA, working under, first, the founding director, Robert Quentin, and then his successor, Tom Brown. In 1963 NIDA established the Old Tote Theatre Company. Clark directed a notable production of Max Frisch’s The Fire Raisers in the company’s first season (1963). Among his other Old Tote productions were Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1964), which toured widely; Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane and Hochhuth’s The Representative (both 1965); Pinter’s The Homecoming (1967); and Thomas Keneally’s Vietnam War allegory, Childermas(1968). In 1966 Clark went to the United States on a Harkness Fellowship, completing an MA in Television Directing at the University of California (Los Angeles).
Clark became director of NIDA in 1969. He appointed Elizabeth Butcher as bursar soon after. She eventually assumed the role of administrator, and she and Clark worked together for more than 30 years. Clark’s NIDA duties left him little time for outside directing activities, though his 1972 production of David Williamson’s Don’s Party in the 1972 Jane Street Theatre season, transferred to the Parade Theatre and toured Australia for eight months.
In 1979 he directed Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle as NIDA’s contribution to the inaugural season of the Sydney Opera House. This was in effect the curtain raiser for the Sydney Theatre Company, which was established that year to replace the cash-starved Old Tote Theatre Company. Clark and Butcher were, respectively, the STC’s initial artistic director and administrator. They gave the new company its name and guided it though its first year.
Clark extended NIDA’s acting and technical production courses from two years to three, and appointed a new generation of teachers, notably reviewed and revised as theatrical times changed.
In 1984 work started on a new home for NIDA, a superb, purpose built complex on Anzac Parade, on the western campus of the University of New South Wales. The occasion was marked by a visit from Prime Minister Bob Hawke. After the students greeted him with an energetic chorus of ‘Advance Australia Fair’, he announced that they had just sung the country’s new national anthem.
In 1988 Hawke was back to officially open the building. In his speech he adroitly alluded to the school’s earlier home in dowdy, recycled buildings at the old Kensington racecourse: ‘NIDA is no longer a gamble: it is an institution with a proven track record. It deserves, and is getting, its own stable.’
By the year 2000 NIDA was offering seven different courses. In 2001 Prime Minister John Howard opened the latest addition to the NIDA complex, the superb new 730-seat Parade Theatre. It was launched by Mel Gibson, who had contributed $US1 million to the building fund.
Gibson is NIDA’s most prominent ‘old boy’, but there are so many others – over 1500 of them – who owe their theatrical careers to their days at NIDA. Many packed the Parade Theatre to pay homage to Clark when he retired in 2004.
Under his 35-year directorship, NIDA became Australia’s largest and most comprehensive centre of excellence for theatre, film and television, supplying the arts and entertainment industry with talented actors, designers, directors, stage managers, playwrights, administrators, technicians, craftspeople and movement and voice specialists, many of whom are leaders in their various fields, nationally and abroad.
One of John Clark’s last official projects was the compilation of a book telling NIDA’s story and celebrating its achievements. It is a remarkable and colourful chronicle and, typical of Clark, he let his students and his staff take centre stage. It was published in 2003.
John Clark served as president of the Producers and Directors’ Guild of Australia in 1983-84. He was on the Northside Theatre Company board from 1983 until 1989 and a member of the management committee of the Northern Territory Theatre Company during 1986-87. From 1976 to 1980 he chaired the NSW Government Advisory Council on Cultural Activities. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1981. And John Clark served as president of the Producers and Directors’ Guild of Australia in 1983-84., in recognition of his outstanding contribution to excellence in Australian live theatre.
In 2004, John directed his final production for NIDA in the new Parade: an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. After the run, the graduating actors had their showcase for industry professionals. John went backstage to congratulate them. In the foyer afterwards, a student called John onto a podium and presented him with a bunch of flowers. He was wondering why they hadn’t done this backstage when Channel 9’s Mike Munro appeared from nowhere and said, “John Clark, this is your life.”
After retiring from NIDA, John indulged his archaeological interests with trips to Egypt, Turkey and Morocco, to Machu Pichu and the Galapagos Islands, and to Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. He directed plays in India, Singapore, and China before returning to where his theatre life began, at Hobart’s Old Nick Theatre Company, with a 2009 production of Hamlet.
In 2006 he was honoured with a Helpmann Lifetime Achievement Award, by Live Performance Australia (LPA).
In 2022, his service and achievements were chronicled in his memoir, An Eye for Talent: A Life at NIDA. The book is structured around quotes from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which John last directed at NIDA in 2003.
John was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1981 for service to theatre. In 2006 he was honoured with a Helpmann Lifetime Achievement Award.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day,
(A song from Twelfth Night, John’s last production at NIDA in 2003)
A commemoration of John’s live will be held at NIDA on May 29. Details yet to come.