The theatre director who wrote The Knack

Ann Jellicoe, who has died aged 90, was a “linchpin” of the English Stage Company based at the Royal Court theatre in the 1950s, said Michael Coveney in The Guardian, and wrote two plays that are now part of its “legendary canon”. The Sport of My Mad Mother, a drama about teenagers in East London that largely relied on noise, dance and music in place of dialogue, proved too experimental for its first audiences: it lasted just 14 performances. But The Knack was a huge hit. It made Jellicoe’s name and turned Rita Tushingham – who had the lead role in the original stage production – into a star.

Born in Middlesbrough, and brought up in Saltburn, Ann Jellicoe (above) knew her future was in the theatre at the age of four, said The Times, and enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama after leaving school. She spent time acting in rep, then founded the Cockpit Theatre Club in London, where she staged works by Ibsen and Strindberg. She wrote The Sport of My Mad Mother as an experiment in directing, and was shocked when it came third in an Observer competition for new playwrights in 1956. Although it flopped, the Girl Guides Association then commissioned her to write a work with a cast of 1,000. “Write anything,” they said – inadvisably. Jellicoe produced The Rising Generation, in which girls were urged to reject men and leave Earth to colonise a new planet. The Guides wanted nothing to do with it. “For some insane reason, somebody in the Guides got the idea that I write nice, safe plays for teenagers,” remarked Jellicoe. The play was eventually staged, successfully, with a cast of 150 children.

In the mid-1970s, she left London with her family for Dorset – where she found her real calling when her local comprehensive asked for her help in staging a play. The production expanded until it involved the whole town, and a new career in community theatre was born. In 1978, she set up the Colway Theatre Trust, producing 40 pieces over the next few years, including new works by the likes of David Edgar and Howard Barker.