NIDA is deeply saddened by the passing of John Clark AM, one of the titans of Australian culture and the Director of NIDA for 35 years.
When John took up the Directorship of NIDA in 1969, the school was housed in three dilapidated buildings: a white, two-storey wooden house (“The White House”) that was once the jockey’s changing rooms for the old Kensington Racecourse. The buildings were unbearably hot in summer, inexcusably cold in winter, and occasionally subject to bird lice. There was a two-year acting course and a two-year production course.
When John retired from NIDA in 2004, there were four theatres (including the new Parade Theatre), nine rehearsal rooms, a film and television studio, scenery, costume and properties workshops, and a large library. Seven courses were joined by a Playwrights Studio, and NIDA Open and NIDA Corporate. NIDA graduates were national and international luminaries. John, working hand-in-hand with the indefatigable Elizabeth Butcher, had transformed NIDA into one of the world’s great drama schools.
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John Richard James Clark AM was born in Hobart on 30 October 1932. At the University of Tasmania, he occupied his time with study, Aussie Rules, student politics, and theatre with the Old Nick theatre. Despite a desire to take up archaeology at Oxford University, he studied theatre at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. There, he designed sets for the first production of Harold Pinter’s first play, The Room, and met Henrietta Hartley, a future television producer who would share a marriage with John for more than 60 years.
In 1959, after John returned to Hobart, he directed a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman for the Hobart Repertory Theatre Society. This led to job offers from Melbourne Theatre Company, the ABC, and NIDA, which had been established just one year before. John took up NIDA-founder Robert Quentin’s offer despite, John recalled, that at the time “there was huge opposition, the feeling being, why train for an industry that doesn’t exist?”. In Christmas 1959, John and Henrietta arrived in Sydney.
From 1960 to 1968, John taught theatre history at NIDA, working first under Robert Quentin, and then Tom Brown. In 1963, NIDA established the Old Tote Theatre Company, Sydney’s first professional theatre company and precursor to Sydney Theatre Company. Leading professionals worked alongside NIDA acting and production students. John made his mark as a director of bold, contemporary plays for the Old Tote, including the first Australian production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which toured widely and attracted the attention of the Vice Squad for its obscenity and blasphemy.
In 1966, John completed an MA in Television Directing at the University of California (Los Angeles) on a Harkness Fellowship, with a long-term view to set up a film and television unit within NIDA. However, just as he returned to Australia the Commonwealth Government decided to establish a national film and television school. Screen skills remained a focus at NIDA.
In 1969, John became the third Director of NIDA. This was a period of seismic culture change in the world. In Australia, Gough Whitlam was leading the federal ALP opposition and was soon to be Prime Minister. Australian culture was rebelling against English styles and pursuing its own voice. Local production in the new television industry was increasing. The “New Wave” of Australian theatre and film was just around the corner and NIDA would play a key role in fuelling it.
One of John’s first actions was to appoint Elizabeth Butcher as bursar. She eventually became General Manager. Elizabeth and John worked superbly together for 35 years, with John leading the artistic and education side of NIDA, and Elizabeth leading the management, finance and fundraising side.
There was rapid development in the training. In 1969, the acting course was extended from two to three years. A dedicated Design course began in 1971. The two-year Production Course was divided into a three-year Technical Production Course and a one-year directing course, with the first directors graduating in 1972. In 1975, a part-time Playwrights’ Studio began. This enabled NIDA to create play production ensembles across all disciplines and to create a thriving community of young artists. Eventually, the productions often toured to other cities, including Newcastle, Orange, Canberra and Melbourne. International directors were often engaged, and ongoing exchange programs were set up with India, Singapore and China.
In 1969, John revived the Jane Street Seasons, which had begun in 1966 but proved unaffordable. This NIDA enterprise was a resident company and involved a mix of professional artists and NIDA students showcasing new plays and new forms of production. It was housed in a converted chapel in Jane Street, Randwick. The seasons ran until 1982 and were pivotal to the development of Australian performance. They produced a stable of now iconic playwrights, directors and actors who explored a multiplicity of approaches. John’s most notable directorial contribution was his 1972 production of David Williamson’s Don’s Party, which was a huge commercial success, transferring to the Old Tote for a three-month run before a one-year national tour. John’s production helped to cement Williamson’s place at the forefront of the Australian New Wave.
In 1979, John was instrumental to the foundation of Sydney Theatre Company. When the Old Tote Theatre Company collapsed in 1978, NSW Premier Neville Wran approached Elizabeth Butcher to set up a new state theatre company to perform in the Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House, then only five years old. Elizabeth asked John to be Artistic Adviser. They established a legal and staffing structure and quietly registered the name “Sydney Theatre Company”. John invited five theatre companies to suggest six plays to be presented by STC as the 1979 Interim World Play Season in the Drama Theatre. It was a hugely influential season. The first production, in association with The Paris Company, was Jim Sharman’s trailblazing staging of Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul. The Nimrod contribution was John Bell’s sensational production of The Venetian Twins, a new Australian musical by Nick Enright and Terence Clarke. John Clark’s production of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle was a NIDA/Jane Street production featuring 12 top professional actors working with 20 second year NIDA acting students. It used every area of the wide Drama Theatre stage and every piece of stage machinery, including the double revolve.
These achievements were made while NIDA students and staff were trampling between a collection of old army huts and racecourse buildings under constant threat of demolition. After astute lobbying from John and Elizabeth Butcher, Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Party went to the 1980 election with a pledge to give NIDA a new home. In 1987, after much fundraising and an aborted move to occupy a redeveloped Seymour Centre at the University of Sydney, NIDA finally moved into its new premises on the Western Campus of UNSW on Anzac Parade, on land leased by the Commonwealth, long-term, from UNSW. By that time, Bob Hawke was Prime Minister. When Hawke opened Stage I of the new buildings, he referenced NIDA’s racecourse origins: “NIDA is no longer a gamble. It is an institution with a proven track record. It deserves, and is at last getting, its own stable”.
NIDA blossomed in its new home. NIDA Open began with a Summer School in 1990 and was so successful that in 2003 it produced a progeny, NIDA Corporate. Also in 1990, John created the NIDA Company. This was Jane Street reimagined, a professional production enterprise that engaged leading professional artists working alongside students. It commissioned and produced an array of new work, with one or two productions a year until 2006.
Nevertheless, NIDA’s main theatre, the Parade, which had been converted in 1969 from an old university lecture hall, was falling apart and a safety hazard. With an eye on the Commonwealth Government’s new Federation Fund, John and Elizabeth went for broke and set out on another judicious round of political persuasion. In 1997, the result was a $25m grant, augmented by $7m in fundraising, to create Stage II of the new NIDA complex, which included a small new teaching theatre (The Studio), a new television studio (The Reg Grundy), an expanded library, design studios with a large adjoining workshop, and a new, 730-seat Parade Theatre. In October 2001, the new building was opened by Prime Minister John Howard, who said: “this organisation, this wonderful collection of material and human assets, really has no parallel in the world”. In April 2002, Mel Gibson opened the new Parade 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, China before returning to where his theatre life began, at Hobart’s Old Nick Theatre Company, with a 2009 production of Hamlet.
John was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1981 for service to the theatre. In 2006 he was honoured with a Helpmann Lifetime Achievement Award. 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. A song from that autumnal play runs:
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.
With John’s play now done, we celebrate his life and give our undying thanks.
A commemoration of John’s life will be held at NIDA on May 29. Further details will be communicated in due course.