Founders Day

Elric Hooper was educated at Wharenui Primary School, Christchurch Boys’ High School and what was then Canterbury University College, where he majored in English, graduating BA and then, in 1958, with an Honours MA. In the Drama Society he acted in Shakespeare productions directed by Ngaio Marsh.

These four years as a student at Canterbury were followed by two in London. Elric Hooper was awarded a scholarship to study acting and directing at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop.

Hooper began his professional career with three seasons with the famous Old Vic Company.There he first worked with Franco Zeffirelli, with whom he moved to Glyndbourne to work on opera productions, before becoming his assistant in the award-winning film version of Romeo and Juliet.

He toured the United States and the capitals of Europe with 'Romeo and Juliet' and Shaw's 'St Joan' where he played Dunois's page and a monk in the trial scene. In 1964 Elric played in a television production, Shakespeare, Man of the Year. At the Oxford Playhouse he worked with Frank Hauser and the great Greek director Minos Volonakis. With Volonakis he worked as an assistant director. He returned to England and in 1972 came to play at the
Mercury Theatre for six months.

Work as performer, director and teacher in America, Scandinavia, Germany, France and Britain followed before, in 1975, Elric Hooper returned to New Zealand to work at Downstage in Wellington. Then, in 1979, he was appointed artistic director of the Court Theatre, here in Christchurch, a position he held from 1979 until his retirement in 2000, an unprecedented tenure in New Zealand professional theatre.

At the Court he has been responsible for a number of fine musicals, and for Canterbury Opera he headed some remarkable productions of (amongst others) Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Puccini.

He has also given many talks on musical theatre and opera on the Concert Programme and written programme notes for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

In 1990 Elric Hooper’s services to the arts in New Zealand were recognised both by the award of an MBE and of a New Zealand Sesquicentennial Commemorative Medal. Canterbury University awarded him an honorary LittD in 2001.