HARRIET CRUICKSHANK

founder, Cruickshank Cazenove Ltd

Harriet received an ACE bursary to train in arts administration where secondments included the RSC and Ed Berman’s Interaction and was a member of the Drama Panel for 3 years.  

She was the General Manager of the Citizens’ and Close Theatres in Glasgow and was the first administrator of the Scottish Arts Council’s visual arts centre the CCA.  

She worked at the Royal Court Theatre on three occasions – first as Helen Montague’s assistant when Lindsay Anderson, Anthony Page and Bill Gaskell were the artistic directors; later as General Manager of the Theatre Upstairs when Nicholas Wright was artistic director there, and Assistant General Manager of the Theatre Downstairs; and finally as the press and publicity manager.  Her colleagues elected her onto the board of the English Stage Company, a position she held for 20 years, and she now sits on the board of Royal Court Theatre Productions Limited.  

While at the Court, she worked on the original productions of The Unseen Hand by Sam Shepard, Not I and Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, The Changing Room by David Storey, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead by Winston Ntshona, Athol Fugard and John Kani and The Rocky Horror Show.  

In 1970, she and Christopher Cazenove founded Cruickshank Cazenove to allow those with modest sums to invest in West End shows.  Among the productions they backed were Three Months Gone by Donald Howarth with Diana Dors,  How The Other Half Loves by Alan Ayckbourn, and the original London production of Company music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim with Elaine Stritch.  In 1983, Cruickshank Cazenove was re-founded in its current form as a talent agency.

In 1999, Harriet produced the short film BIG DAY written by Jim Broadbent and directed by Tom Cairns and the feature film MISS JULIE written by Helen Cooper and directed by Mike Figgis.

She is one of the founders of the ALFRED FAGON AWARD and, with Nick Hern and Rob Ritchie, she pioneered selling playtexts as programmes at the Royal Court, a practice that now extends to many other theatres in London and around the country.