Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance is pleased to announce that Sir Richard Eyre, the stage and film director and former Director of Britain’s Royal National Theatre, has agreed to become the College’s first President. His role begins on July 1st 2010.
Sir Richard Eyre will ‘use his considerable talents and experience to help promote the College and its students during a challenging period of change and growth,’ said Rodney Gent, Chair of the Board of Governors. Professor Michael Earley, the College’s Principal and Chief Executive Officer, said: ‘Richard Eyre’s prominence as a director and producer of theatre, film, opera and television, plus his writings about theatre and as a cultural commentator, make him an ideal advocate for a specialist higher education institution like Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. In making this appointment the Board of Governors and I feel that the interests of our current students and previous graduates will be greatly enhanced by such a passionate artistic advocate like Richard Eyre. He is someone who can help us articulate to government, the HE sector and funders the vital need for quality training of performers, designers and technicians that only a place like Rose Bruford College can provide.’
In accepting the College’s offer Richard Eyre responded: “I am pleased that Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance has asked me to become their President. The theatre, film and television professions need talented, trained young people to refresh the artistic world that I’ve been part of for so many years. Without the kind of training that this College fosters that world will diminish and, eventually, die. Any prospective student who is passionate and determined about performance, design and technical arts in any theatrical medium will find at Rose Bruford a place that fosters the necessary imagination, skill and knowledge to pursue it as a career.”
Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, is a university-level HE institution with over 200 staff and 1,000 students, studying on 16 different undergraduate and postgraduates degree courses on its parkland campus in Sidcup, Kent, and by means of online distance learning. It produces over 75 individual productions a year as part of its training across all its degree programmes and the University of Manchester validates its degrees. Since Rose Bruford College was founded by the drama, voice and speech teacher Rose Bruford in 1950, it has had illustrious Patrons: Dame Sybil Thorndike, Lord Olivier, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Sir Rex Harrison, Michael Blakemore, Professor Laurie Taylor (a graduate), Freddie Jones (also a graduate), Yvonne Brewster, Max Stafford-Clarke and others before the College moved to creating a distinguished list of Fellows and Honorary Fellows of the College. When Professor Michael Earley joined the College as Principal in spring 2009, he was keen to attract to the College a President whose own artistic values best reflected the work being done at Rose Bruford College, plus someone of stature who could best represent the aspirations of the College to the industry for which the students are training and the wider world. Sir Richard Eyre meets the College’s expectations in every way.
