In Memoriam: Peter James

News reached LAMDA over the weekend of June 28 and 29 that Peter James passed away peacefully. Peter’s influence on LAMDA, as its Principal in particular, and across the wider industry has been substantial.

LAMDA’s Professor of Shakespeare & Early Modern Drama, and a close colleague for many years, Rodney Cottier, remembers Peter:

"By the time of his arrival in 1994, LAMDA was still based in a Victorian town house building on the Earls Court Road/Cromwell Road junction. Its 100-seat MacOwan Theatre, created out of an artist’s mews house and garden nestled around the corner in sleepy Kensington, W8. Since its founding in 1861, LAMDA had resembled Hamlet’s travelling players, moving from the West End to South Kensington, where it was bombed during the war, to Hampton Court to Earls Court. For decades local churches rented their halls to LAMDA for classes and rehearsals. Enter Peter James CBE, as LAMDA’s Principal.

Born in London in 1940. He read English and Philosophy at Birmingham University and received a post-graduate certificate in drama from Bristol University. Co-founded with Martin Jenkins and Terry Hands The Everyman Theatre in Liverpool in 1964, where he directed, until his appointment in 1971 as Associate Director of The Young Vic. Peter became the first person in seventy years to direct a Russian company with his production of Twelfth Night at the Sovremennik Theatre in Moscow. In 1974 he moved to The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield (to which be brought the World Snooker Championship!) and in 1981 came home to London to be director of the recently refurbished and revitalised Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. He left The Lyric in March 1994, being persuaded by the Head of the LAMDA Technical Theatre Course, to apply for the vacant position of Principal. He did so with some misgivings. He had little experience of teaching beyond some theatre-in-education work with local schools when he was at The Everyman, he worried that he had become ‘such an old pro’ that he would be impatient with students who ‘couldn’t do it’. In the event, he quickly discovered that he had ‘underestimated the charm of youth’. 

“I spent most of my first interview saying that I wasn’t sure they’d got the right person and that I didn’t know anything about teaching at all. But that wasn’t a problem. They needed someone to run the place. And that I knew about.”

Peter’s style was unique. Sporting a wide-brimmed hat, a ponytail, pin-striped trousers, and a cloak, he was able to roll a liquorice-papered cigarette single handed whilst writing with the other…now that’s style!"

Over the next sixteen years Peter’s energy and self-sacrifice invigorated his team and rejuvenated colleagues. First one to arrive, last one to leave - he often slept on a sofa bed in his office. Of course we wanted him to direct all the time, but there were more important matters requiring his attention. Finding a new home for LAMDA. 

Here he created a team whose energy and expertise matched his own: Luke Rittner, Rudi Konrath, Rob Young, Douglas Slater, backed up by a Board, Faculty, Alumni and Student Body whose advice was constantly sought. From start to finish, the project took twenty-one years with a now-retired Peter being a very special guest-of-honour at the grand opening of The Sainsbury Theatre in 2017.

Peter’s achievements have been significant and long lasting. Here are a just a few:

• The purchase and redevelopment of The Royal Ballet School on Talgarth Road
• Reform and new constitution of the Governing Body, creating an Executive Board and Advisory Council, along with sub-committees specialising in Audit, Examinations, Development, The New Build, Finance.
• LAMDA Examinations International Syllabus and Anthology. Within three years travelling to Sri Lanka, Kenya, The United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Singapore, the United States, Zimbabwe and Uganda. By 2008, twenty-six countries were participating.
• LAMDA Examinations in Musical Theatre for the Actor/Singer
• Creation of:
  • Two Year Acting Course for Graduates
  • One Year Foundation Course
  • One Year Directors Course for Graduates
  • One Year Movement Instructors Course for Graduates
  • One Year Theatre Design Course for Graduates
  • Single International Semester Course in Classical Acting
  • Eight-Week Shakespeare Summer Programme
  • International Four-Week Shakespeare Course in Los Angeles
• The Three-Year and Two-Year Courses validated by The University of Kent, awarding the graduating students a degree: BA(Hons) in Professional Acting.
• The Long Project: a ten-week new writing project where actors worked with a playwright to create new work. Playwrights and directors included Mark Ravenhill, Kathryn Hunter, Di Trevis, Conor Mitchell, Steve Waters, David Freeman, Opera Factory, Vanessa Badham, Robin Soans, Stephen Jameson, Peter Morris, Anthony Nielson. Mark Ravenhill’s Mother Clap’s Molly House (1999) and Di Trevis’ reworking of Pinter’s unfilmed screenplay for Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (2000) were both performed at the National Theatre.
• LAMDA became the only drama school to commission New Musicals.
• The review and restructuring of the Screen & Audio Department, led by Deborah Paige, ensuring students received a more comprehensive training.
• 2004: the creation of an annual Lecture Tour of American and Canadian Universities and Theatre Companies to raise LAMDA’s international profile. To date: 481 lectures in 35 states.

LAMDA is honoured to have experienced Peter’s leadership.

Colleague, director, and teacher at LAMDA, Penny Cherns, commented:

“Peter made it professional, flexible, and very relevant. Promoting its well-deserved training reputation. He moulded the institutions he took over, challenged them, and LAMDA was part of that.'

Mark O’Thomas, LAMDA’s Principal and CEO, added:

“Peter James was a transformative force in LAMDA’s history: visionary, unrelenting, and deeply committed to the value of artistic education. His legacy is embedded not only in our building, but in the generations of practitioners whose lives he shaped. We are profoundly grateful for his leadership.”