When I think of John Clark, the first thing that comes to mind is that he was the most influential arts leader Australia has had – as an arts practitioner and educator – over the past fifty years. He was a great man. He loved what he did. He valued every student. He wanted each of them trained to the very best of their ability so they could reach their potential.
When I first went to NIDA, I knew nothing about theatre. I had never even been to the Old Tote. I liked the building, that lovely white house, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. John taught me everything I knew. From the very beginning, he guided me and showed me what to do. That was John. He taught by doing and he trusted people to grow into their roles.
Very early on, after I had only been there a month, he went to England and sent me a note asking me to help find a play. Among those scripts – I had never read a play before – was one with rude words and foul language. It was Don’s Party, long before anyone knew what it would become. That was John, always thinking ahead and shaping what Australian theatre could be.
We worked as a partnership. I became a very good administrator, and I looked after everything that had to be looked after. That left John free to be an educator, to be out on the floor, in rehearsal rooms and workshops, working directly with students.
That balance was crucial, and it worked. As NIDA grew, it was John who wanted to expand beyond acting. Design, technical production, and later directing were added because he believed theatre training needed to be complete. So many people from those early years have gone on to extraordinary careers.
John understood that the Director of NIDA needed to be an educator first. He knew what students needed, how many voice classes, how many movement classes, and how their training should be structured. He was always available to go into rehearsal rooms and workshops to help students directly. Decisions were never made around a visiting director’s preferences but around what students needed for their development. That ethos defined NIDA.
John also played a defining role beyond the school. He and I were involved in the earliest days of what became the Sydney Theatre Company. John programmed that very first year. His vision extended well beyond NIDA and helped shape the cultural life of this city.
John’s legacy is everywhere. It lives in the thousands of graduates across acting, design, production, and directing who trained under his leadership. It lives in the international careers of people like Cate Blanchett, Baz Luhrman, and so many others. Most of all, it lives in the principle he held without compromise, that students come first, and that excellence in training creates excellence in the art itself.
That is what John Clark leaves behind, and it is an extraordinary legacy.
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Elizabeth Butcher and John Clark led and worked together at NIDA for more than 40 years. John as Director of NIDA and Elizabeth as Administrator. Together they grew NIDA into the world-renowned dramatic arts institution that it is today.