George Smyth obituary
My husband, George Smyth, was a teacher and theatre-maker who had an influence on the development of community performing arts in the north-east of England. His innovative work in collaboration, and increasing participation in hard-to-reach audiences, made an important contribution to experimental theatre.
In 1967, George, who has died aged 89, set up Theatre Probe, “to explore the possibilities of a new type of theatre, based on improvisation”, in an underground poetry venue, the medieval Morden Tower in Newcastle-on-Tyne.
He used the new American improv technique of Theatre Games, previously only applied by a few professionals to establish character, with amateurs to improve plays, and scouted for new members in libraries, bookshops and colleges. The following year, Theatre Probe gave its first performance in the Tower, and took a Eugene Ionesco play, Victims of Duty, to the Edinburgh fringe.
George continued collaborative theatre-making until the mid-1980s, when he created a new method for a new audience: writing participative plays for three- to six-year-olds olds. He set up Access Children’s Theatre (ACT) and toured nursery and primary schools for the next 10 years.
Born in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, to smallholders Grace (nee Thompson) and Thomas Smyth, George left High Wycombe grammar school to study English at Leeds University, graduating in 1956. He then began a PGCE in order to become a teacher. He took a post at a school in Tring, Hertfordshire, where he taught the beat poetry then being written in the US. One of his pupils, Spike Hawkins, became an early underground poet who was instrumental in setting up Liverpool’s first regular venue in 1961.
A conscientious objector, George worked as a postman and hospital orderly for his alternative national service. Following a period working in London, he went travelling, arriving in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1961, where he taught English in the Commercial College for three years, finishing up as head of department.
After a cultural tour of India and the Middle East, George returned to the UK in 1966 with an interest in innovative forms of theatre. He gained a qualification in theatre production and teaching, and practical experience at the Unity theatre in London. Through Spike, he joined the countercultural community established at Morden Tower. As a committee member in the late 1960s, George helped accompany new American poets such as Robert Duncan, Edward Dorn and Robert Bly in the UK. I met George at a poetry reading and joined his improvisation class.
Some members of Theatre Probe, including George and me, lived communally, taking improvised theatre to streets and festivals. In 1970 we left the collective to volunteer with Les Treteaux Libres de Genève. Rejoining colleagues, now called Skin and Bones Theatre Collective, George and the group toured theatre-in-education, puppetry and pantomime around disadvantaged areas of the north-east, sometimes extending to Scotland and Wales.
After taking an extra qualification in early years education in 1986, George wrote plays for the nursery section of the collective, which became ACT in 1989, and toured them until retirement in 1998, when we settled in Totnes, Devon.
We married in 1992, and the following year became a long-term foster family to two young siblings.
George is survived by me.
