Cornish on Cornish, A brief Autobiography

BY ANTHONY CORNISH, NEWSLETTER OF THE OLD CHINGFORDIANS ASSOCIATION, JANUARY, 2004. CHINGFORD COUNTRY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, 1947-1951

A LIFE OF DRAMA
I was at Chingford Country High School from 1947 to 1951 and here is a brief summary of what went on in my life after that and of what inspired it.

When I was twelve years old my father, a dance band pianist six evenings a week and a church organist on the seventh, said to me "If you want to get on in this world you must learn to speak properly." Coming as I did from a "London" family I was not quite sure what he meant, but he introduced me to Dick Williams of the Modern College of Speech and Drama in Orford Rd., Walthamstow. Every Saturday morning I went for an elocution class. My first two speeches were "Open your ears..." Rumour's speech from Shakespeare's Henry 4th Part Two, and Gus the Theatre Cat by T.S. Eliot. I loved it and sensed that this was the entry to my life. Dick also headed up a theatre department at the Walthamstow Educational Settlement, in Greenleaf Road, run by Quakers. I went there first to join a youth drama group and then to weasel my way into the adult shows, playing cute kid roles. Both groups did a play in the autumn and another in the spring. In the summer we played two Shakespeare plays and some others in an open-air theatre in Epping Forest known as "The Wilderness," attached to a house belonging to the artist Walter Spadbury. Some of us will have grown up knowing his railway posters. My greatest opportunity there was as Curtham in Christopher Fry's The Boy With a Cart. I was also doing school plays, but there was not the same enthusiasm for me as at the Settlement.

After High School I got a job at the BBC as a desk clerk in the sound effects library, whilst carrying on at the Settlement. Both were educational experiences. Two years later and it was time for National Service. A man I had met at the BBC suggested I write to him when I knew where I was in the Army, and he would try to get me into the Forces Broadcasting Service. Dick Williams work had an effect! I wrote and it worked. After four weeks basic training, including rifle shooting, I went to camp on the South Coast to wait for my assignment in Europe. It was to be Austria. I traveled alone on a military train from Torquay to Klagenfurt and another stage of my life began. Many of the staff were civilians and it was decided that the soldiers should not wear uniforms when working. We were disc jockeys, interviewers, sports commentators, news-readers and also did a little radio drama. I went from Klagenfurt to Graz and then to Vienna where the Forces Broadcasting Services had studios. There was a very high level of professionalism, which was both very stimulating and challenging.

After the army I was wholly determined that the theatre would be my career, and it has been ever since. I was first a Stage Manager at the King's Theatre, Gainsborough, both acting and stage-managing. I next had two years as a Penguin Player in Bexhill-on-Sea. I then went to the Civic Theatre in Chesterfield in Derbyshire and in 1957 became Artistic Director. This was a challenging and exciting leap. I had started as the Stage Director and acted a little, but then got a play to direct (my turn) and it was like coming home. Directing has since been my life. In Chesterfield I met my wife Linda Polan who joined the company. We were married in 1962 and we left Chesterfield fro London. We both free-lanced until I applied for and got the job of Head of Drama at the BBC in Birmingham, doing radio and some television including devising a twice-weekly soap opera "United" about Soccer. I also directed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester. My BBC life lasted almost ten years. I was briefly Associate Director at the Haymarket theatre in Leicester.

In 1967 I found myself speaking at a conference in Oxford alongside the dramatist James Forsyth, who had just begun a "junior year abroad programme" in London for Tufts University of Medford, Massachusetts. The students of that first year attended the conference and asked if I would go to speak to them. My Tufts life has been interesting ever since. I became artistic director of the programme in 1971 after I had taken the family to America for a year as "Artist in Residence." I continued my free-lance life and was a co-founder of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. Being in the academic world I decided to get a degree of my own. I went to Birkbeck College, London and obtained an upper second. The Tufts London programme had died and I went to Capitol Radio at the invitation of Richard Attenborough, where I commissioned a play a month and devised a radio soap opera, Nicola Johnson about a young lady reporter. Commercial radio stations are not supposed to have drama departments and after five years we closed down.

The rest of the eighties and early nineties was a free-lance time. I was at Cornell University in Up-Sate New York, for a couple of years, directing and teaching. The British Council, for whom I had done a good deal of overseas teaching work, allowed me to devise and tour from Khartoum to Botswana with a six person production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which was a very rich experience. I am a member of the British Actor's Equity and a founder member of the Director's Guild of Great Britain. I am also a member of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators and have adjudicated all over this country for the European Anglophone Theatrical Societies annual festival. I have also been every four years to Monaco since the mid 1980's as a critic for the Festivale Mondiale du Theatre Amateur which has 40 countries participating. In 2002 Prince Rainier gave me a knight-hood.

In 1994 a friend from Tufts University became Chair of the Drama Department and asked me to return as "Artist in Residence," where I stayed for eight years. I taught acting, directing and public speaking and directed a play each year, six Shakespeare's among them! Since returning to the UK last year I have mostly been teaching in Drama Schools in London. I will return to the Orange Tree also to the Pearl Theatre, a classical company in New York, where I have done six productions. Earlier in 2003 I went to Springfield, Ohio to direct my fifth A Midsummer Night's Dream at Wittenberg University. The Chair there was a Tufts undergraduate in my earlier life. I have directed at the Webber-Douglas, a final's show - The Return of the Prodigal (St. John Hankin) and I am about to direct The Good Person of Szechuan (Brecht) at the Mountview School. In ealy 2004 I will direct Beaumont & Fletcher's first play Philaster or Loves Lies Bleeding.

A life in the theatre, 41 years of marriage and a son, Simon - and all thanks to my father's early advice!

A.C.