By Gemma Bodinetz Artistic Director, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse
I have found writing a response to this tragic event very hard (as I know has Deborah, our Executive Director) because he was so much more than simply a former artistic director of the Everyman, he was, I like to think, a friend and he was/is certainly an inspiration. What follows is then unusually inarticulate by my standards grappling as it does with my professional desire and duty to pay homage to a great man and my own sense of how impossible it is to sum up Ken in less than 12 volumes of densely written prose. Thing is he’d do it in one pithy phrase. There’s the difference. There’s the genius…….
Ken Campbell 1941-2008 Some thoughts on his later years by Adam Meggido
Although the words ‘eccentric’ and ‘maverick’ will no doubt be over-used, they remain woefully inadequate in describing the force of nature that was Ken Campbell.
Ken was exceptionally generous, uniquely daring, utterly inspirational, ruthlessly compassionate and one of the greatest British theatre practitioners of all time. If you wanted to learn about theatre, and I mean real theatre, the best education you could get was from Ken.
It's wonderful that, beyond the esoteric and the fantastic, so many people have said how incredibly ENTERTAINING Ken's shows nearly always were - producing laughter of an order you hadn't imagined possible. Flanked by Ken Dodd and Morecambe and Wise on one side, and Joan Littlewood and Brecht on the other - all big heroes of his - his bottom line was ALWAYS what made a great show, that night.
And tomorrow was different. It's true that he often pushed performers very hard, but only because he wanted them to realise their potential (which was always far more than they thought themselves capable of), and didn't have time to fuck about in pursuit of the 'eternal, ineffable laughter' he always pursued.
And if you reached the point where he could say to you, 'Right, that's enough, that's so good now it's boring, then you knew you'd hit the mark. He was a great director, steeped in the true traditions of theatre, and a great teacher.
Oliver Senton was in Ken Campbell's theatrical impro troupe, The School of Night
