Dorothy Tenham

Dorothy Tenham (born Dorothy Swettenham; 1 April 1931 – 15 February 2008) was an English actor and stage manager who became a pioneering teacher of technical theatre. In the mid-1950s she established, against much opposition, the first course in the United Kingdom for training stage managers and other theatre technicians, and in so doing played a crucial role in the formalisation of technical theatre practice. At the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London she trained many students who were to become the UK's leading stage managers, as well as those students who later flourished in other theatrical craft disciplines or elsewhere in the creative arts. Her course informed the industry and set the standard for all subsequent theatrical technical training in drama schools, universities and technical colleges.

Early life and career Tenham was born in Southport, Lancashire on 1 April 1931 to Walter Swettenham, a master baker and confectioner, and Ethel Swettenham, a prominent local producer of amateur theatre. She was educated in Southport. At the age of 15 she was playing roles in amateur drama in the town and the wider locality and receiving good reviews.

By the age of 19 Tenham had become a professional actor and was a member of the resident repertory company of the Liverpool Playhouse. The manager of the Playhouse, Maud Carpenter, complained that the name "Dorothy Swettenham" was too long to fit on the theatre's programmes and insisted that it be shortened to Dorothy Tenham. As was common in repertory theatre in the early 1950s, minor actors were also employed as assistant stage managers and it was in that task that Tenham found her métier and abandoned acting, becoming the Arts Theatre's resident stage manager (SM). Previously SMs had learnt casually on the job, but with modern advances in technical theatre and an increasingly rigorous approach towards theatrical apprenticeship, such casual training was becoming insupportable. Tenham insisted that training for stage managers at RADA should have the same status as the academy's training of actors, with the award of a RADA Diploma at the end of a student's training. She was also anxious to increase the status within the industry generally of the back-stage arts, leading to proper recognition for all the technical theatre disciplines as well as stage management. She moved to Scotland where she ran the box office at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre for five years. She was awarded a Stage Management Association special award in 1989 for her pioneering work in stage management training.

After living with vascular dementia she died on 15 February 2008 and is buried in Fonab Cemetery in Pitlochry.