Prof. Richard C. Beacham - FRSA Director, King's Visualisation Lab

Dear Judie Christie and Richard Gough;

I write to express my great admiration for the groundbreaking and extraordinarily creative and influential work that the CPR have carried out over many years. It is profoundly dispiriting that this has now been placed in the greatest danger by the short-sighted, ill-argued, and unjustified decision by the ACW to withdraw the support which has been so central to your outstanding success, and to your future aspirations. Its proposed alternative of project by project grants is so patently impractical in the light of the carefully crafted relationships and infrastructure that has enabled your work to flourish in the past, as to seem frankly disingenuous, in coming from an organisation whose leaders -- as the professionals one hopes and presumes them to be -- must certainly "know better".

I remember with great pleasure and high regard the symposium, in your Past Master Series, devoted to "Craig and Appia, Sculptors of the Modern Stage" for which I was privileged to give a keynote presentation. This meticulously planned and richly varied symposium was one of the most imaginative, informative, and, frankly, luminous and moving events that I have experienced in my career. It was emblematic for me -- and I know the same view was taken by other participants some of were widely respected international figures -- of the high quality and consequent esteem of CPR work.Please let me know how I might further assist you in seeking to reverse this lamentable decision.

Yours sincerely

Richard Beacham

Prof. Richard C. Beacham,
FRSA Director, King's Visualisation Lab,
www.kvl.cch.kcl.ac.uk King's College London