My husband, Jeff Teare, who has died aged 67 from a cranial haemorrhage, was a true man of the theatre, who confessed to me once that the only time he felt completely alive was with a group of actors in the rehearsal room.
In the early 1970s he was one of the founders of the Medium Fair community theatre company in Exeter, before becoming director of studio and theatre in education at the Derby Playhouse. He was associate director with Michael Bogdanov both at the Leicester Phoenix theatre and at the Young Vic in London, and then became a staff director at the National theatre on its production of Hiawatha, for which he arranged the music.
In 1986 Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Royal in Stratford East took him on as associate director with Philip Hedley, giving him free rein to work on radical shows such as Cut and Trust and Blackboard Bungle by Patrick Prior and Crusade by Paul Sirett. It was there that his love of panto flourished in partnership with Prior, with whom he created hugely entertaining and memorable shows such as Robin Hood, Red Riding Hood, Mother Goose and Jack and the Beanstalk.
Jeff ventured to Wales in the mid-90s as director of the Made in Wales theatre company, to which he brought a new energy and direction. This was followed by international work with Theatrescience, a company he founded with the producer Rebecca Gould, which worked on youth theatre in Uganda and projects at the Jagriti theatre in Bangalore, India.
In total Jeff directed more than 125 productions, ranging from puppet shows for under-fives to Shakespeare and Chekhov. He also taught and directed at various drama schools, including Rada.
Born in Purley, Surrey, to James, a baggage handler at Croydon airport, and Truey (nee Coles), a cook, Jeff went to Purley county grammar school for boys. He then graduated with a degree in drama and English from Exeter University, where he and I first met in 1971, and stayed in Exeter after his studies to help establish the Medium Fair company there. Throughout his life he was a mentor to many people and a champion of diversity. A committed supporter of the actors’ union, Equity, he was chair of its directors’ committee for many years.
At the time of his death Jeff was directing a show – Old Soldier – that he had devised by drawing on the books of Frank Richards, whose novel Old Soldiers Never Die was one of the most widely acclaimed memoirs of the first world war. Old Soldier was a last synthesis of what Jeff’s theatrical skills had always been about: bringing ideas and people together and creating socially committed theatre with something to say. It was staged in June at the Melville theatre in Abergavenny and will go on a short tour of south Wales in November.
Jeff is survived by me, by his brothers, Dave and Tony, and by his sister, Kathleen.
