Bold, Courageous and Anarchic

Te Aroha-born actor and co-founder of London’s Common Stock theatre group Frank Whitten, who died in February at the age of 68, was “a giant beanpole of a man who only seemed to open his mouth when it was wrapped around a Woodbine,” screenwriter and Common Stock member Martin Stellman remembers. “When we began to work, I noticed the extraordinary loyalty he commanded from the actors … he made you feel that, come hell or high water, he was going to make your fragile material not only come alive but be something special.” In the 197s Whitten, along with his colleagues Dorothy Bromiley, Chattie Salaman and Andrew McAlpine, founded Common Stock, an Arts Council-funded company dedicated to community theatre. A friend from Common Stock days, Julie Hudspeth, declared that Frank’s greatest legacy was to be found in the number of young people’s lives he had affected: “They respected him. He took them seriously. They almost treated him as if he was one of them – bold, outrageous and anarchic.”

Frank Whitten: 15 November 1942 – 12 February 2011