Tony Craze was an influential player in the history of new writing for the British stage who is remembered by friends and colleagues for his generosity of spirit, a quality borne out by a career more focused on the encouragement of emerging talent than on personal achievement.
He was born Anthony Paul Craze in 1944 in Newquay, Cornwall, the son of Gerald Craze, a solicitor, and his wife, Jeanne (née Voller). Craze quickly showed an affinity for the theatre and by the mid-1950s had already made his West End debut as a performer, in the musical The King and I.
He went on to study at Watford Art College and the London Film School. In 1983 he enjoyed his first stage success: Shona, a scathing critique of psychiatry, which won the inaugural Verity Bargate prize — a coveted award for new writing. Sue Dunderdale, who became artistic director of Soho Poly Theatre the next year, was struck by Craze’s passion and flair His next piece, Living With Your Enemies, was to be the first production she directed in her new role.
Their collaboration led to Craze joining Soho Poly as resident writer, a position that saw him nurturing playwrights with what Dunderdale describes as “the love, skill and care of the most diligent gardener”. She worked with him on two more plays — Angelus and Going West — and when she left in 1988, Craze took over as artistic director. His tenure proved challenging: the company lost its building and was threatened with closure. Yet Craze piloted a course between between temporary homes, until he was able to set up at Marylebone’s Cockpit Theatre in 1991. Soho Theatre Company was based there for three years, before moving to its Dean Street home.
Craze ran writers’ workshops and championed diversity, mounting a season at the ICA that included an opera, Emisori Rites, sung in English and Swahili. He was the theatre writing associate at London Arts Board (now Arts Council London), and an active member of the Theatre Writers’ Union (later the Guild Theatre Committee). The playwright David Edgar recalls that “his good sense and dry wit made him a most agreeable colleague and companion”.
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Author of more than a dozen plays, Craze branched out into fiction: his novels include the trilogy The Urchin’s Progress. He wrote non-fiction too; his 2012 playwriting manual Write a Theatre Script in 25 Days (& 10 Hours) is a bestselling workbook on Amazon.
Married twice — to Clare Calder-Marshall, in 1981, and to Sarah Le Brocq in 2008 — he had two children with Calder-Marshall: Joshua, now a writer, and Harry, a music producer. He lived for the last eight years in Haut-Garonne, France, with Le Brocq.
Dunderdale describes Craze’s writing as “spare, layered, witty, moving . . . but most of all he was cruelly honest, he wouldn’t allow one false word or a moment that didn’t aim for truthfulness”. He is as much admired for his support of other creatives, and the template he set for Soho Theatre. As Mark Godfrey, the executive director of Soho Theatre, puts it: “His thinking and vision are strongly present in the DNA of our company.”
Tony Craze, playwright, novelist and director, was born in Newquay on July 7, 1944. He died on September 9, 2016, aged 72