Kenneth Tynan theatre critic until mid-1963 when he joined the National Theatre. In 1963, Laurence Olivier became the British National Theatre Company's first artistic director. Tynan had been highly dismissive of Olivier's achievements as artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, which had opened in 1962, but he recommended himself for the role of literary manager. Olivier was initially outraged by Tynan's presumption but Olivier's wife, Joan Plowright, convinced him that Tynan would be an asset at the National Theatre Company, then based at the Old Vic theatre. When he became the National Theatre's literary manager, Tynan ceased to be the theatre
John McGrath (artistic director) the artistic director of the Contact Theatre in Manchester (1999-2008) and the founding artistic director at National Theatre Wales (NTW) (2009 - end of 2015). During his time at the NTW the actor Michael Sheen starred in and was creative director of "The Passion", a 72-hour secular passion play staged in Sheen's hometown of Port Talbot, Wales with over 1,000 local residents taking part. In 2013 McGrath was interviewed alongside a number of other theatre practitioners in Wales for the It Gets Better Project. The project was set up in response to the suicides of teenagers who were bullied because