My old friend Peter Kiddle, who has died aged 73, was an inspirational teacher of writing and drama at Dartington College of Arts in Devon in the 1970s and 80s, and founder of the community theatre group the Theatre of Public Works.
He was born in Fareham, Hampshire, the son of Sidney Kiddle, a research scientist for the Royal Navy at Portsmouth, and his wife, Rhoda (nee Harris), a foster carer to troubled children. Peter was born with a form of spina bifida, and as a child had plates surgically implanted to hold his vertebrae together. At Price’s school, which we both attended, he was known affectionately as “Billy the Kiddle”; he grew his hair long, rarely did sports and had no truck with the school cadet corps. He was Fareham’s first and possibly only beatnik, a poet, a bit of a painter and always a little mysterious.
Pete studied English at Exeter University, graduating in 1966, and there met Cathy Roebuck, soon to become his wife and lifelong partner in teaching, writing and theatricals. After graduation he was appointed lecturer in English at Dartington College, then five years later he came to Leeds for postgraduate work and quickly fell in with the joyfully anarchic creative chaos that was Leeds School of Art. He and Cathy went on the road with the Welfare State International theatre group, based in Leeds, for two years, living in a caravan and putting on spectacular shows of fire and magic in northern industrial towns. Their son, Thom, was born in Burnley in 1974.
Inspired by the experiences, on return to Dartington Peter began teaching theatre and writing material with his students. He was instrumental in establishing residencies in deprived areas of Plymouth and London as third-year students’ placements in the four-year Dartington theatre degree course. He then set up the Theatre of Public Works company, which toured the West Country putting on shows that would engage the local community in wild, carnivalesque events involving music, fire and spectacular chases through the streets.
Pete took on demanding commissions, working on a joint venture with Israeli and Arab young people near Haifa in Israel and with Romany communities in the Czech Republic. Though an inspiration to a whole generation of writers and performers at Dartington, he was nevertheless a source of bafflement to some of his colleagues.
After retiring in 2002 Pete co-produced a touring exhibition of life along the River Dart, an invaluable insight into the lives of old Devon working families, and later an exhibition based on, for the first time, his painful experience of spina bifida. And with Cathy, he did two years’ VSO in Ethiopia. Gradually, illness incapacitated him. Cathy cared for him unstintingly throughout.
Pete is survived by Cathy, Thom and two grandchildren, Luke and Billy.
