Young Vic the entire faculty resigned from the Old Vic, but in 1969 Frank Dunlop became founder-director of The Young Vic theatre with his free adaptation of Molière's "The Cheats of Scapin", presented at the new venue as a National Theatre production, opening on 11 September 1970 and starring Jim Dale in the title role with designs by Carl Toms (decor) and Maria Bjornson (costumes). Initially part of the National Theatre, the Young Vic Theatre became an independent body in 1974. In the words of Laurence Olivier, then director of the National Theatre: "Here we think to develop plays for young audiences,
National Theatre School of Canada was a leading authority on theatre training who had created the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and later was to co-founded the Juilliard School Drama Division in New York City. In fact, French-born Saint-Denis had what many regarded as an ideal background to offer guidance to Canada's national co-lingual theatre school project (he gives details of his employment as a consultant for this project, and the involvement of his wife Suria, in their co-authored book "Training for the Theatre: Premises and Promises"). In the 1920s, he had worked closely with his uncle, the remarkable French theatre director Jacques Copeau, to