(Image Courtesy of Terry Lane estate)

We remember Terry Lane, ABTT Associate Member and first chair of the Stephen Joseph Association now the ABTT Stephen Joseph Committee, who passed away peacefully at home this August on his sunny porch. Terry was an influential exponent of avant-garde theatre in Britain in the 1960s and was an active member of the ABTT Stephen Joseph Committee until his death.

Terry is most noted as a founder and the first Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, which opened in January 1963. Situated on the first floor of a former women’s doss house just off the Royal Mile the premises were rapidly converted into a private members theatre club. At once this got round the problems of public performances requiring a fire escape for the building and being subject to Censorship. Terry gave the new theatre its name and defined its open-stage format with its small audience split on either side of a lounge-sized acting area. This was a space well-suited to a small cast engaging their audience with experimental, often absurdist, European theatre at point-blank range. Plays were performed with gusto and often grotesquery, as exemplified in their production of Jarry’s Ubu Roi, which was the runaway success of the season and drew reviewers and theatricals from far and wide. The success of the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh influenced the rise of studio theatres for younger audiences in numerous other British cities and heralded the rise of Alternative Theatre in the Seventies.

Terry’s approach to theatre and his love of ‘open stage’ directness was greatly influenced by Stephen Joseph and his Theatre in the Round Company, when he worked with him both at Scarborough and on tour. To keep things fresh and spontaneous Stephen always encouraged everyone to think ‘outside the box’ of theatrical conventions and established practice. Terry willingly obliged in this. As he himself put it, “If I had not worked for two years with Stephen as his stage manager and later director, I would not have had the ability and audacity to start the Traverse theatre”.

Following the work at Edinburgh he moved on to successful seasons as artistic director for Stoke Vic, The Midlands Arts Centre, he also directed productions for the RSC and the Manchester Library Theatre. However, he had a restless disposition and was always moving on. Quite soon the business of bringing up a family and coordinating his own theatrical life with that of his actress wife, Ros Dickson, became too burdensome. So the couple chose the rather easier alternative of setting up a bookshop in Helensburgh on the tourist route to the Isles from Glasgow, which they ran together for over twenty years.

During his final years at the bookshop Terry was to return to ‘Sixties Theatre’ once again, when he began on the detailed research and interviews for a very engaging and readable biography of Stephen Joseph, The Full Round, which is still in print. This he finished off and published while resident in Italy in 2006. In 2007 he went on to publish his own auto-biographical history in the Theatre, Side By Side that includes a detailed account of his work at the Traverse.

The ABTT Stephen Joseph Committee is proud to have known and worked with Terry. His knowledge and practical experience of Stephen in the theatre made him a wonderful figurehead for our group and has proved invaluable in our current work supporting forms of creative innovation in theatre today. We were so pleased that he joined our numbers when we first set up in 2016 and agreed to be our first chair. He brought a vitality, curiosity and general affability to our meetings. We will miss him greatly.

Bob Millington (current chair ABTT Stephen Joseph Committee)