My friend and former husband, John Hole, who has died aged 81, was one of the young turks of regional theatre at a time when the government saw it as a priority.
In 1964, he was selected for a two-year bursary in theatre management run by the Mermaid theatre in London. Three years later he became artistic director of the Swan theatre, Worcester, where he founded the Worcester Repertory Company. John had an instinct for young talent and commissioned a staggering number of original shows, including 14 from David Wood, who has since written more than 50 children’s shows. His first director, Sam Walters, became artistic director of the Orange Tree, Richmond, and company members Celia Imrie and Alison Steadman are household names.
John always believed that local theatre should have a vital role at the centre of the community. He introduced workshops for teenagers, schools and village tours, and commissioned street theatre and directed vast youth productions.
On leaving Worcester in 1974, John was appointed artistic director of the new Queen’s theatre, Hornchurch, east London, where he expanded his acting company and community projects. He put on late-night performances by new writers and took Paul Tomlinson’s production of Tommy to the West End. The Sunday morning foyer jazz he started has been running at the Queen’s ever since. He also became chairman of the Bubble theatre.
In 1981, he left the Queen’s to set up a touring company, Vagabond Theatre Productions. Subsequently he became head of arts and entertainments for Hammersmith borough council, then, four years later, set up an internationally successful agency for street performers. Finally, in 1991, he started the production company, West Stage, where he helped nurture two Bubble productions, From a Jack to a King and Return to the Forbidden Planet, which went on to have simultaneous West End runs. He retired at the age of 70.
Meanwhile, he had taken up writing, and A Bedtime Story (1995) and The Ultimate Aphrodisiac (1996) were published by Hodder and Stoughton. Will’s Secret, Kevin Short’s screenplay of John’s last book Will Shaksper’s Secret (2019), is on the selection list for two festivals.
Born in Peckham, south London, the son of George Hole, the first chief executive of the British Airports Authority, and Gertraut (nee Koppe), John was educated at Westminster school and then Balliol College, Oxford (1959-62), where he studied politics, philosophy and economics. But theatre was his great love – beginning with the puppets made by his German grandmother. John also loved mountaineering and hill walking, especially in north Wales where he and his dad restored a ruined cottage that still belongs to the family.
John and I were married in 1964 having met at Oxford University in 1961. We divorced in 1991, but had been living apart for nearly 10 years. In 1995, John got together with Morag McRae, whom he had first met in 1988 after a concert at the Wigmore Hall in London, when she was working for the Poetry Society. They were married in 1997. Morag survives him, as does their daughter, Esther, his children, Ben, Abigail and Joe, from his marriage to me, three grandchildren, Gabriel, Jack and Valentina, and a brother, Ernest.
