My father, the playwright and novelist Tony Craze, who has died aged 72, won the first Verity Bargate award for new theatre writing in 1983. He went on to play an important role in British theatre for more than 30 years, both through productions of his own work and through championing other writers as artistic director of the Soho Poly theatre and as theatre writing associate at the London Arts Board.
Tony was born in Newquay, Cornwall, the son of Gerald Craze, a solicitor, and his wife, Jeanne (nee Voller). His father died when he was very young, and the family moved to London. He attended Effra Parade junior school and then Archbishop Temple’s school in Lambeth. He did some acting as a child and young adult before going to Watford Art College to study photography and typography and then to the London Film School to study filmmaking.
His first success as a playwright was with Shona (1983), a terse attack on modern psychiatry, which won the Verity Bargate award, and was performed at the Soho Poly theatre. He wrote a number of other successful plays, including Living With Your Enemies (1985) and Passion (2002), which Michael Billington described in the Guardian as “an honourable and engrossing attempt to explore the gulf between well-intentioned western liberalism and burning Palestinian rage”.
Tony’s plays were sparse, and characterised by an unstinting honesty. In many of his works, the British class system is interiorised by characters who battle their own anger and search for a sense of peace and dignity. He had a long relationship with the Soho theatre, which produced many of his works, including Angelus (1987) and Going West (1988).
He was also a committed teacher. As a resident writer at the Soho Poly, he painstakingly helped emerging voices to find their way in the world of British theatre. From 1988 to 1991 he was artistic director there, overseeing the move of the company to a new home, as well as co-producing and presenting ambitious new work at the Royal Court and Riverside studios. He championed the work of black writers in a season at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, including an award-winning opera, Emisori Rites, sung in English and Swahili.
After leaving the Soho theatre, Tony became theatre writing associate at the London Arts Board (now Arts Council London). Over nearly a decade there he encouraged and promoted new writing across London, opening up the theatre world to diverse voices. Tony had a real and lasting impact on the culture of new writing in British theatre. He was also an active member of the Theatre Writer’s Union, and of the Guild Theatre Committee, after the union’s amalgamation with the Writers’ Guild.
From 2008, Tony lived in France with his wife, Sarah Le Brocq, in the Haute-Garonne, where he wrote eight novels, and a number of works of non-fiction. His prose, as ever, was sparse, direct and honest.
He is survived by Sarah and his two children, Harry and me, from his previous marriage, to Clare Calder-Marshall.
