TONY Ravenhall is to retire this summer after 22 years of teaching performing arts at York College.

His last directorial work can be seen this week in the final year Acting and Backstage Arts production of Echoes Of Hubris: Sophocles’s Oedipus The King and Antigone fused together in a new translation by David Stuttard, with additional material by Tony himself.

Echoes Of Hubris will run from Wednesday to Friday at 7pm nightly, plus 2pm on the first and last day, in York College's Alan Ayckbourn Theatre. Tickets are available at £6, concessions £4, from the college's finance office on 01904 770495.

Looking forward to playing Oedipus under Tony's direction, Kane Hutchinson, formerly of Canon Lee School, says: "Tony’s unique direction brings out the best in students; he has a clear vision and it’s been great to be part of that.”

David Wiczynski, formerly of Graham School, in Scarborough, wants to follow is Tony’s footsteps as a director and will progress from York College to Manchester Metropolitan University to study contemporary theatre and performance.

“This course has given me the chance to move on and Tony has been an inspirational tutor," he says. "He has so much knowledge and has been extremely helpful helping me with my university applications and auditions.”

Georgia Steel, formerly of Thirsk School, will study acting at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London on leaving York College. She is full of praise for Tony's directorial guidance. "He's one of kind and a very good director and it’s been amazing working with him," she says. "Tony has helped me to understand how different directors put their ideas across, working with performers to create theatre.”

Born in Worcester in 1955, Anthony Ravenhall showed early thespian promise at Nunnery Wood Primary School by winning the first and only drama prize for his role as a Golly in the The Green Imp.

Sport would not be his forte. When attending Worcester Royal Grammar School, he was once bowled for a duck by cricket-legend-in-waiting Imran Khan.

Tony was cast as Snout the Tinker in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the life-changing whim of the director. "He thought it would be fun to have a character with a stutter – which I did – but found I couldn’t stutter on stage," he recalls. "It was the first time I found that I could have a life without a stutter. All I had to do was act someone who didn’t stutter."

And so, via studying town planning ("big mistake," he says) at Aston University and taking on jobs as a buyer for a large DIY company, supermarket manager and forklift truck Instructor in a maximum security prison, Tony began his journey into theatre.

"I joined Worcester Arts Workshop in 1977 to learn about how to write a play and was asked to join their Community Theatre Company," Tony recalls. "I agreed to do so just for the summer and three years later I was still working with them and helping to run the Arts Centre. So I decided that if I was going to an actor, I needed to get proper training."

He trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff as an actor and director from 1980 to 1983, whereupon he became director of the Big Brum Theatre Company from 1983 to 1985.

After serving as the associate director on Woodbine Willie, Worcester’s first community play, in 1985-86, he arrived in York in 1986 to take up the director's post for York Theatre Royal’s Young People’s Theatre Company.

"This professional theatre company toured to schools and community venues throughout North Yorkshire and nationally and internationally, but I was made redundant on Christmas Eve 1990 when the Theatre Royal closed down the YPT company after 22 years of continuous work in an attempt to save money," says Tony.

His talents were in demand, however. He directed and wrote for Cleveland Theatre Company, Durham Theatre Company and Northumberland Theatre Company from 1990 to 1996 and was co-organiser and production manager for the TakeOff Festival of children's theatre in County Durham from 1992 to 1996.

In addition, Tony was artistic director for the Local Community Plays at Cuddies Fair, Durham and Darlington Railway Festival:1992 and 1994.

In 1993, he was asked to help set up the new performing arts course at York College as a local industry consultant. Sitting on the Edexcel verification board, he duly oversaw the creation of both the performing arts and media courses at York College (or York College of Further and Higher Education, as it was called at the time).

In 1994, Tony started teaching on the Performing Arts course two hours a week to "help out". "It began with nine students on one course and now we have over 200 spread across eight courses," he says. "Since 1994, we've had around 2,000 students studying Performing Arts."

Tony turned full time in the 1999-2000 academic year. "In 2007, we moved to a new campus in Sim Balk Lane and I arranged for the college's new theatre to be named after Sir Alan Ayckbourn and later I became Team Leader for Performing Arts in 2010," he says.

In York, Tony has directed the York Guild of Building’s wagon play, Creation to the Fifth Day, since 1994. In tandem with the York College construction department and the York Guild of Building, he created the now infamous Creation to the Fifth Day cart. Inspired by medieval clock and agricultural machinery, it was designed by York College art students and next will feature in the 2018 wagon plays.

In the 2012 York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens, he played Joseph. "It was my first acting role in more than ten years, and strangely enough, one of the last people to see me act professionally at that time was Mike Kenny, writer of 2012 plays," he says.

At York College, Tony created the ForthWall Theatre Company in 1996 to allow students to tour shows to schools. No Pasaran and Lysistrata were presented at secondary schools; Visiting Katt And Fredda and Peacemaker at primary school.

The first production in the Alan Ayckbourn Theatre, Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, starred Sam Coulson as Romeo and Toby Gordon as Mercutio. Sam, now using the Equity name of Samuel Edward Cooke, has since performed at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, while LAMDA graduate Toby is playing Lucifer in the York Minster Mystery Plays 2016.

York Press:

Toby Gordon, one of Tony Ravenhall's past students at York College, now playing Lucifer in the York Minster Mystery Plays 2016. Picture: Duncan Lomax

Among Tony's other alumni from York College are film actress Mhairi Calvey; actor Xalvador Tin-Bradbury, who trained at AMDA in New York and has worked on Broadway; and musical theatre actress and singer Ionica Adriana, who played Witch Blackweed in the 2015-2016 Grand Opera House pantomime in York, Jack And The Beanstalk.

"There are 22 top drama schools in Britain, including RADA, LAMDA, ALRA, the Royal Welsh and the Royal Scottish Conservatoire, and over the past ten years we've had students studying at all of the these," says Tony. "As well as at top dance schools, Lane, Bird, Northern School of Dance and too many prestigious university courses to mention.

"Technical and Backstage Arts students now work extensively within the industry and have included such posts as lighting designer for Robbie Williams' European Tour and stage manager and prop maker for Cirque du Soleil in Beijing and the National Theatre in London."

In 2013, Tony presented the world premiere of David Stuttard's Trojan Trilogy at York College, comprising a reconstruction of Euripedes’ Alexandros, Palamedes and The Trojan Women, together with the Satyr play Sissyphus. Now, Stuttard's Echoes Of Hubris will mark Tony Ravenhall's college farewell.

What next? On retiring next month, Tony will return to Herefordshire and spend time in Sweden. "I have a business making re-enactment leather wares, shoes etc, and I make long-bows too; I'll be continuing this business, both here and abroad," he says. "I'm also preparing a one-man version of Beowulf to perform at Viking festivals and markets in Scandinavia."