On May 24, Melbourne Theatre Company lost its founding father and longest-serving Artistic Director with the death of John Sumner in Melbourne a few days short of his eighty-ninth birthday.
There’s no overstating his importance to the development of a vibrant Australian professional theatre: John Sumner was the key man. He transformed the landscape. Assessing his influence a year after Sumner’s retirement in 1988, the actor Graeme Blundell wrote, ‘He was the father of professional theatre in Australia. It was John’s single-minded vision that forced the colonial ideas of theatre to become a profession. We owe him a huge debt.’ Roger Hodgman, who took over from Sumner as MTC Artistic Director, said recently, ‘It is impossible to imagine anyone again having such an influence on the course of theatre in this country.’
