Obituary: The Boston Globe

BY GLORIA NEGRI, GLOBE STAFF
Anthony Cornish, an internationally acclaimed British theatrical director, television and radio producer, and teacher who had a long affiliation with Tufts University, died July 5 in Denville Hall, a London nursing home, of pneumonia. He was 70.

Mr. Cornish had been in the nursing home for a year after being diagnosed with motor neuron disease, a degenerative disorder, according to Downing Cless, a former Tufts colleague. In the 1970s, Mr. Cornish was director of Tufts in London, a popular junior-year-abroad program for the university. During that period he came to the Medford campus to direct several productions, said Cless, an associate professor of drama at Tufts.

From 1994 to 2002, Mr. Cornish was a full-time artist-in-residence for acting and directing in Tufts' Department of Drama and Dance and lived in Cambridge.

"During the six years that I was chair of the department, Tony gave 110 percent of his seemingly boundless energy and bright mind to teaching, directing, and services for this department," Cless said in an e-mail.

As a director of a major production each year, Cless said, Mr. Cornish elicited remarkable performances from actors, many of whom were students in his classes.

"Then, on his own time, Tony spent long hours coaching audition pieces for so many of these actors when they were seniors, most of them by that point considering him to be his mentor," Cless said. ''An impressively large number of them are now in the profession."

Many former students have expressed their devotion, admiration, and gratitude to him on a website set up by one of them, Joshua Gates, an actor in Los Angeles.

Among them is the actor William Hurt.

"Tony's demands were pretty stringent, and he gave us strength by that," Hurt wrote on the website. "His productions were magnificently orchestrated and portrayed. In those days, he wore a goatee and dressed and spoke with a panache, which goaded and delighted. He was a completely gifted and enlivened artist of theater, and a great teacher."

Mr. Cornish was born in Walthamstow in London's East End. His father was a pianist with dance bands who sent his son for speech and drama training. That, said Mr. Cornish's son, Simon of England, is what got him interested in theater.

When he left school, he got a job at the BBC record library. When the time came for him to do national service, he served as a radio broadcaster for the British armed forces and was stationed in Austria.

After the service, he got a job as stage manager at Gainsborough Rep, a theater in Lincolnshire. Within four weeks, his son said, Mr. Cornish had been promoted to stage director.

Within a brief time, he was appointed director of the Chesterfield Civic Theatre. One of its actors was Linda Polan, whom Mr. Cornish married.

Eventually, Mr. Cornish moved to the BBC Radio Drama Department and was head of radio drama in the Midlands. In England, Mr. Cornish taught at a number of London's top professional schools of theater, such as Guildhall, and Webber Douglas Academy.

He came to the United States to direct at theaters in New York and Seattle. In the 1980s, he was artist-in-residence at Cornell University.

In her tribute on the memorial website to Mr. Cornish, Nicole Soffin, a New York attorney and part-time performer, recalled studying drama with him at Cornell and how he helped students decide if the theater was really their calling. "I got the distinct sense that he cared too much not to be entirely candid with me," she wrote. "For Tony, the theatre was not about fame or glory. It was about making the world a more thoughtful and beautiful place."

A private funeral service will be held Monday in England. Mr. Cornish's son said in an e-mail that a service will be held later in London and possibly in the United States.