Terence Richard Knapp (14 February 1932 – 12 August 2019) was an English actor, director, educator, and author. He was an Emeritus Professor of Theatre, University of Hawaii at Manoa, a (Sir Winston, KG) Churchill Fellow and a Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Associate.
Youth and early career
Knapp was born in Hackney, London, England, the firstborn and only son of seven children of Capt. Richard Henry Knapp, RAMC and Alice Catherine (née Carey Keegan) Knapp.
The family was evacuated from London during World War II, first to an abandoned coal mine village in Wales and then to live with relatives in Crumlin, a suburb of Dublin. With his father away on military duty, Knapp became the responsible man of the household at an early age. He took a scholarship examination at the age of eleven and won a free place at Parmiter's School, an all-male Anglican grammar school. At age 14, he was cast as Lady Macbeth. His headmaster sent for his parents and told them that their son was talented and should audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). The Governors of Parmiters paid the audition fee.
On a scholarship from the London County Council, he was given a place at the Preparatory Academy for a year, until he was of age to be admitted to RADA. He was reassessed and formally admitted to RADA. Knapp was seen in an Academy performance of She Stoops to Conquer and signed by a leading theatrical agent; however, at the age of 18, he was drafted for the National Service.
He was trained in the Royal Air Force (RAF), earning a Best Recruit citation of a Wing Intake of over 1200 men, trained as an aide in anesthesiology, and served in a mobile operating theatre team in Germany as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Early career
In 1953, after three years in the RAF, he returned to RADA and was awarded the Academy Medal in the Annual Showing, also the sought-after prize of a year's engagement at the doyen of British Repertory Theatres, the Liverpool Playhouse. After four years of widely-varied roles in three-weekly repertory in Lancashire, where he also made the acquaintance of Brian Epstein, he returned to London, where he earned a high reputation in both BBC and ITV television productions (when all transmissions were live), films and theatre. In 1962, he was invited by his idol, Sir Laurence Olivier, (whom he had seen perform on stage in roles such as Oedipus, Sir Peter Teazle and Hotspur) to be a founding member of the Chichester Festival and, one year later, an Inaugural Player of the National Theatre of Great Britain, under Olivier's direction, at the renowned Old Vic Theatre, which culminated in 1965 with Knapp's takeover of Olivier's star role as Tattle in William Congreve's Love For Love at the Scala Theatre prior to the now legendary visit to both Moscow and Berlin in Othello, Hobson's Choice, and Love For Love.
He was invited by John Neville, then Artistic Director of the Nottingham Playhouse, to tour West Africa for the British Council, along with a company including Judi Dench, who played Viola in Twelfth Night to Knapp's Feste. The company performed in Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone for three months, after which Knapp found an opportunity to travel in Africa and Europe, where at Easter he had an audience with Pope John XXIII in Rome.
In 1966, after four years with Olivier, he was again invited by Neville to tour for the British Council, this time in Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Brunei, Sarawak, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines, where the company performed under the patronage of Imelda Marcos in her new Performing Arts Center of Manila. Knapp then visited Japan of his own accord, where for four and one-half months, he worked as a consultant with the Kumo Theatre Company of Tokyo on the world premiere of The Golden Land, a play about the persecution of Christian missionaries and their converts in the early 17th century Nippon, by Endo Shusaku, touring throughout southern Japan with the company by local train with communal accommodations in small inns and hot spring spas.
In the summer of 1966, he was summoned back to England to join John Neville's Nottingham Playhouse company, spending two years with Neville and a brilliant young American associate director, Michael Rudman, playing a succession of leading roles, including Oberon, Tony Lumpkin, and Octavius in both Julius Caesar and Antony And Cleopatra, as well as Rodrigo to the Othello of Robert Ryan and John Neville's Iago.