Hugh Percival Cruttwell (31 October 1918 – 24 August 2002) was a British drama teacher and consultant. He was Principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, England for 18 years, from 1966 to 1984."Hugh Cruttwell", The Daily Telegraph, London, England, 28 August 2001, p23. After declaring himself to be a conscientious objector and consequently serving as an agricultural labourer during World War II, he began his professional life as a teacher in private schools but in 1947 moved into theatrical production, spending several years as a stage and production manager at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, Berkshire, England before becoming a freelance drama director. He combined his academic and theatrical experience when he joined the teaching staff at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) in 1959. After seven years there he was appointed Principal of RADA where he presided over one of its most illustrious periods, training many leading actors. He was regarded as having restored the academy's position as Britain's premier drama school."Obituaries: Hugh Cruttwell", The Times, London, England, 30 August 2002, p32. In retirement he served for ten years as artistic and production consultant to the actor and director Kenneth Branagh.
Early life Hugh Cruttwell was born in Singapore on 31 October 1918, the son of Clement Chadwick Cruttwell, a British insurance officer who spent much of his working life abroad, and Grace Fanny Cruttwell née Robin.1939 England and Wales Register, The National Archives, United Kingdom. He spent his early childhood in Shanghai, China but at the age of 10 his mother took him with his younger sister, Marjorie, to live in Britain.Claire Armistead, "Hugh Cruttwell", The Guardian, London, England, 29 August 2002, p18.P&O Rajputana, Passenger List, arrival London 26 July 1929, UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960, The National Archives, United Kingdom.
Cruttwell attended King's School, Bruton, a public school in Somerset, England as a boarder where he developed a love of the theatre and film and became adept at "sneaking out to watch the latest release at the local cinema". In the school holidays he went to his grandfather's vicarage in the village of Woodchurch, Birkenhead, England, where his mother had settled. In 1937 Cruttwell went up to Hertford College, Oxford (where an uncle, C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, was Principal) to read modern history, graduating in the summer of 1940 in the first year of World War 2. As a conscientious objector to armed service, Cruttwell worked as an agricultural labourer for the duration of the war and then taught at a number of private preparatory schools before teaching history at Marlborough College, a public school in Wiltshire, England. While teaching he was “nursing an interest in theatre," Cruttwell told the New York Times in 1982, "but never doing anything about it in any capacity."Roberta Plutzik, "Pursuing Acting Tradition at London's Royal Academy" [sic], New York Times, New York, USA, 15 August 1982, Section 2, p3. Not enjoying teaching history, in 1947 he decided on a change of direction and sought work in the theatre.
Stage manager and theatre director At the age of 28 Cruttwell found work as an assistant stage manager at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, Berkshire, England which then ran its own repertory company. In time he progressed to stage manager and then production manager."Hugh Cruttwell: 1918 - 2002", RADA Magazine, London, England, 2002. He "worked [his] way up" to an associate directorship at the Theatre Royal and directed plays at Windsor and other theatres in and around London, including the West End, for the next ten years, though as he later confessed to the New York Times, he had "a not very distinguished career as a director of several West End productions, all doomed to failure."
Drama teacher Cruttwell found his métier, combining his love of theatre and his experiences of teaching and directing, when in 1959 he took up a directing and tutoring post at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) where among the students during his time there were Brian Cox, Stacy Keach, Martin Shaw and Janet Suzman. He remained at LAMDA for six years, until the end of 1965.
Principal of RADA In October 1965, at the age of 46, Cruttwell was appointed principal of RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in London."New Principal for R.A.D.A.", The Times, London, England, 14 October 1965. In a change from the responsibilities of previous holders of the post, Cruttwell was to be in charge only of teaching and productions, the control of administration and finance being newly devolved to separate management."RADA chief's post 'under discussion'", The Daily Telegraph, 20 September 1965, p19.
Cruttwell's popular predecessor, John Fernald, had had a widely publicised disagreement with the RADA Council over matters of spending priorities and executive responsibilities. The students backed him with strikes and sit-ins but, under pressure, his resignation in May 1965 was inevitable."Hugh Cruttwell: 1918-2002", RADA Magazine, London, England, 2002. As a result Cruttwell inherited control of an institution whose senior management was in some disarray and whose student body harboured deep unhappiness and some resentment about Fernald's departure. Starting work at the academy in January 1966, Cruttwell declared that "there have been so many strictures and so much bad blood, and this is the point in RADA's history when it must stop".
Cruttwell decided his first tasks, as well as soothing the academy's unsettled atmosphere, were to establish his own teaching and production proposals, and to widen the scope of student admission.
Well over a thousand aspiring young actors applied for the two-year RADA acting course every year during the 1960s, every one of whom was auditioned at least once. Of that huge number of hopefuls RADA had the capacity for an intake of at most only 20 or so every other term, resulting in 80 students under instruction at any one timeRichard O'Donoghue, "The Actor's Right To Act", The Times, London, England, 20 April 1968, p20. and only 35 to 40 students completing their training each year.Hugh Cruttwell, "Letters", The Stage, London, England, 27 November 1969, p18. As the number of applicants was whittled down during the auditioning process Cruttwell would start to identify those to whom he would like to offer places. On how he made his choices, Cruttwell told The New York Times in 1982 that he was "not interested in competence": "I want a blank sheet on which they can write something. I can't be more precise than to say I'm looking for a capacity to transfix an audience ... If an applicant makes me sit up and take notice, that's what I want."
In choosing students for the academy, Cruttwell "believed in taking risks, admired eccentricity ... and had an eye for performers as well as actors," said his obituarist in The Times. "He had an ability to discern promise in untutored aspirants whom conventional teachers might have regarded as clumsily crude." And as he had had experience in different fields before coming into theatre he was eager to encourage those who, like himself, had trained in other (sometimes wildly different) disciplines before taking up acting, resulting in a socially heterogeneous student intake with a wide age range. Despite his academic background he also maintained a disregard for the academic qualifications (or lack of them) of aspiring students. As a result, in the 1960s the RADA student body came to differ considerably from the perception in earlier years that it was a middle class finishing school.
In a change to the views of his predecessors, Cruttwell held to the belief that the only way to learn to act was to act. His approach was radical: he dispensed with all the existing classes except the technical ones such as voice, movement, dance, singing, improvisation, stage fighting, make-up, stage technique and so on, and the rest of the time students would rehearse and perform plays with professional directors, and for their final two terms they would rehearse and perform exclusively in RADA's public auditoria, the Vanbrugh Theatre and the Little Theatre (later named the GBS), with occasional studio productions elsewhere in the academy's buildings.
Cruttwell also made immediate moves to bring the reality of modern theatre into his curriculum. His predecessor, John Fernald, had considered that "modern" meant Anton Chekhov. Cruttwell brought in a number of young directors to work alongside the more experienced staff, feeling it was imperative his students were introduced to truly contemporary writing and directing as well as being immersed in the classical standards of William Shakespeare, Restoration comedy and, indeed, Chekhov. Outside the commercial West End of London presentation styles of production were changing; the old commercial repertory theatre tradition was fast disappearing to be replaced by subsidised theatre both in London and the provinces and new small fringe theatre venues were appearing, often in buildings not originally designed for drama. Radio and film had long provided work for actors, but in the 1960s television was presenting an increasing number of acting opportunities. Cruttwell recognised that new ways required up to date acting styles and was pragmatic in preparing his actors for all the new types of acting opportunities as well as the traditional tasks that would present themselves when they left RADA. Nevertheless, RADA had to abandon television training in the early 1970s because of the cost. "It seemed a minimal gesture anyway," Cruttwell told Michael Billington in 1973. "Ideally more time would be devoted to television and films but this is only a marginal extension of the basic work."Michael Billington, "School for shambles", The Guardian, London, England, 1 January 1973, p12.
Cruttwell believed in exposing students to the wide variety of acting techniques rather than to any specific Stanislavskian, Strasbergian or Adlerian discipline and he placed students with tutors and directors holding differing technical viewpoints, allowing the actors to find the technique and style that suited them. He maintained that with eight to twelve teachers working at the academy at any one time: "if you wanted to instil a particular approach to acting, it would be impractical ... There may also be directors working here with whom I'm out of sympathy but whose approach I think students should learn about. It's a catholic affair."cited by Michael Billington in The Modern Actor, Hamish Hamilton, London, England, 1973.
One of Cruttwell's students, Mark Rylance, later recalled: "it was up to us to choose the technique that worked best for us. He was adamant that we were able to survive and muster ourselves believably on stage, whatever the technique we used to get there."
Cruttwell picked the plays to be rehearsed and performed by his students and chose who should play which parts. His casting choices were "unpredictable and daring" according to one student.Michael Simkins, What's My Motivation, Ebury Press, London, 2003, p50. A director employed by Cruttwell, Glyn Idris Jones, had much the same view: "At RADA you had no say in casting. Cruttwell presented you with the cast list and, though you might think some of his choices bizarre to say the least, he knew his students and had his reasons. It was up to you to get performances out of them."Glyn Idris Jones, No Official Umbrella, DCG Publications, Greece, 2008, p329.
Cruttwell very rarely directed plays at RADA, but he kept a close eye on all the productions. Towards the end of rehearsal every cast faced what was universally known as "the Cruttwell Run", a performance of the entire production, usually in the rehearsal room, in front of Cruttwell. A former RADA student, Michael Simkins, recalled: