Ted Craig, the Australian actor, director and producer who built a distinguished career in British theatre while remaining a champion of new writing, has died in London. He was 86.

Born in Melbourne in 1940, Craig began his career in television while still a teenager, joining GTV-9, one of the pioneers of Australian broadcasting. Starting in the mail room, he progressed to floor manager and camera assistant before moving to Adelaide station ADS-7, where he became a producer in the early 1960s.

His work there encompassed children’s puppet shows, current affairs, Meet the Press and religious dramas. Theatre, however, soon became his principal passion. While acting with Adelaide theatre companies, Craig won the Best Supporting Actor award at the 1964 Adelaide Festival of Arts for his performance as Nonno in Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana.

Ted Craig (1940-2026)

He subsequently moved to Britain, joining the resident company at the Lyceum Theatre in Crewe as an actor and director. Appointed artistic director in 1968, he mounted productions including the British premiere of Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral.

In 1973, Craig returned to Australia as resident director of the Old Tote Theatre Company, which had become the principal theatre producer for the newly opened Sydney Opera House. During five years in Sydney he directed Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Congreve’s Love for Love, Molière’s The Misanthrope, Coward’s Hay Fever and Feydeau’s The Lady from Maxim’s, as well as the Australian premiere of Peter Shaffer’s Equus.

He also directed Lysistrata for the Old Tote and the Australian premiere of Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man for Melbourne Theatre Company.

Craig’s association with British director Lindsay Anderson, forged during his Sydney years, led to one of his most prominent international engagements. When Anderson was unavailable, Craig was recommended to direct Malcolm McDowell as Jimmy Porter in a 1980 New York production of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.

Craig subsequently worked as Anderson’s assistant on the 1982 film Britannia Hospital.

Returning permanently to Britain, Craig took over as artistic director and chief executive of Croydon’s Warehouse Theatre in 1985. A tiny, 100-seat venue housed in a converted Victorian cement warehouse, it became under his leadership a notable home for new writing and emerging talent. He co-founded the International Playwriting Festival in 1986, attracting submissions from across Europe.

The Warehouse also became synonymous with Craig’s affection for popular theatre. In 1998 he commissioned Dick Barton – Special Agent, a comic musical pastiche of the BBC radio serial. Its success led to a revival, national tour and a sequence of sequels, all directed by Craig.

After the Warehouse closed in 2012 and the building was subsequently demolished, Craig continued the playwriting festival through alternative venues, maintaining his commitment to new writers.