Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts

Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, formerly Mountview Theatre School, is a drama school in Peckham, south London, England, founded in 1945. The Academy provides specialist vocational training in acting, musical theatre and actor musicianship as well as production arts and theatre creative practices. The President of the school is Dame Judi Dench, and the Principal is Sally Ann Gritton. History Mountview was founded in Crouch End, north London, in 1945 by Peter Coxhead and Ralph Nossek as "The Mountview Theatre Club", an amateur repertory company staging a new production for a six-day run every second week. Among the club's productions were Coxhead's staging of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, a production of the complete Arnold Wesker Trilogy – Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots and I'm Talking about Jerusalem directed by Peter Scott-Smith – and Buttered Both Sides, a revue written and composed by Mountview member Ted Dicks and directed by Gale Webb, which later transferred to the Fortune Theatre in London's West End. Early in 1946, when 21 years old, Coxhead borrowed £2,300 to buy the lease of Cecile House, a large derelict property at Crouch End. Development at Cecile House included the conversion of a gymnasium into what became the Mountview Theatre. The Mountview Theatre officially opened in November 1947 with a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. The theatre presented one play each month until 1949, after-which Coxhead bought the building outright from the leaseholders. For the next 25 years the theatre staged a new production every two to three weeks. Ralph Nossek went on to pursue a professional acting career in 1955 that lasted 56 years.