Dossier DCL/1/5 - York Festival and Mystery Plays

David Clarke was a showman and theatrical all-rounder. For 50 years he devised, wrote and produced hundreds of plays, shows and full-scale pageants involving casts of hundreds on a monumental scale.

Clarke was born in London on 20 October 1931, before moving to Farncombe when he was two years old. He attended Godalming Grammar School, Goldsmiths Teacher Training College and Guildford School of Art.

In 1951 he acted in the Pageant of Farnham, and took part in the Guildford Coronation Pageant in 1952, before undertaking National Service in 1954-1955.

Clarke went on to teach art at Camberley Grammar School in Guildford, during which time he produced plays and operas, and founded the Cloister Players. In 1957 he was selected as production designer for the pageant of Guildford, which ran for ten days with a cast of thousands.

During the 1950s Clarke directed and produced two films, Mr Guy and The Girl with the Ponytail, both of which won awards in a national competion promoted by Movie Maker magazine and shown at London's Nationai Film Theatre. He also continued directing and producing plays for The Cloister Players and, in 1971, took the entire company to Cornwall's Minack Theatre to perform Romeo and Juliet and The Importance of Being Ernest. He also directeted A Mid-summer Night's Dream at Loseley Park, West Dean College in Sussex and at the Chichester Festival.

In 1968 David returned to pageants, devising, designing and producing The Pageant of England at Shalford Park. Around 1,000 people took part, all of them parading along Guildford High Street in full costume before the first performance. Some 100 technicians worked back-stage, 6,000 costumes were worn, 100 animals took part and it was watched by 40,000 people over two weeks. It was 10 years before David returned to Shalford Park with the Pageant of Monarchy.

In 1973 he was appointed artistic director of the Guildford Summer Festival, and in 1977 he organiscd Guildford Silver Jubilee Pageant. Princess Anne, the pageants patron, attended a Performance and David received the Queen's Jubilee Medal in recognition of his efforts.

Pageants followed in Farnham, in 1988, and at Corfe Castle, Dorset, in 1991, and then the Cranleigh Millennium Pageant in 2000 and the Chilworth Gunpowder Community Play at Tillingbourne Valley in the same year.

In 1980, and again in 1984, David was engaged to direct and produce the York Mystery Plays in York Minster.

He died in 2014.