gavin
antony
.
Yesterday
I originally trained as an actor at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where I received a scholarship to study from 1998 to 2001. After graduating I made promising
progress within the industry however, my growing
dependence on alcohol escalated out of control and in 2004 I abandoned my acting career.
By 2015, after 20 years of sustained alcohol abuse, I had
become severely ill and was warned that I would only have 6 months left to live if I continued to drink.
My life was saved when I received valuable government
funding to spend a 24-week period in a residential
rehabilitation centre in West Sussex, which carefully set me on a path to sobriety. This has now lasted nine years and whilst I have continued to rebuild my life, my recovery is still prioritised above all else.
TODAY
Once in stable recovery for two years, I established a small-scale immersive theatre company, and soon after directed my own addiction-based contemporary adaptation of Hamlet which I had developed in the two years post-rehab whilst I was learning how to live soberly. Our company toured this through various fringe festivals throughout 2018 and the
following year, having resecured an acting agent, I made my West End acting debut in Ian Rickson's production of Ibsen's Rosmersholm at the Duke of York's Theatre, alongside Tom Burke, Hayley Atwell, and Giles Terera.
Alongside my directing and acting work, I also began teaching acting as a freelancer and returned to higher eductaion in 2019 when I completed a Post-Graduate Certificate in Performance Teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2023, I graduated again, this time with a master's degree in Actor Training and Coaching from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
tomorrow
I currently lecture in acting at several universities and
conservatoires nationwide and am studying Psychodynamic Counselling at The University of Oxford which I hope will lead to further research opportunities in the field of actor wellbeing with regard to addiction, recovery and the unconscious.
In 2025, with the help of a pretigious Enterprise Award from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, I created Crave Theatre, a company for actors who have experienced periods of drug or alcohol dependancy and who now wish to reconnect with their acting and possibly return to the stage.
As Artistic Director I designed the company's branding,
website and artistic program as well as our charitable aims and objectives. In addition to providing pathways back into the peforming arts for actors in recovery we hope to create new, industry standard guidleines around acting and addiction.
We are due to stage our first public productions later in 2026.