David Craik MA(UCL) RSA Dip. FRAI Ri

Started his career at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School,  where he trained in classical acting and theatre arts and at the renowned Bristol Old Vic Company there. His training also included appearances for BBC TV Bristol.

In the  seventies he gained invaluable 16mm Arriflex film camera experience with the BBC Film Club and worked as production manager and camera operator (16mm Aaton and Beaulieu cameras).

His career in acting and directing has incorporated Theatre (Repertory/The National Theatre/West End/Theatre-in-Education/Fringe); Television; Film - Assistant to the executive producer at Pinewood Studios; Corporate Videos; three Rock Band “pop promos” - ‘four years touring in companies specialising in clown work and classical mime’.

He is a founding director of the Man in the Moon Theatre (1981-2003) where he was also Artistic Director, co-producer and script adviser.

In the mid eighties he founded ADC Films specialising in locally based advertising projects in London and Eire as well as filming a specially scripted stage production of "Billy Liar". In  1985 he was invited to teach at the newly founded Academy Drama School in Whitechapel where his teaching covered not only theatre acting but incorporated screen acting techniques on locations in London. He was Head of Voice for several years and has directed over twenty student productions there, encompassing classical Greek Drama through to Harold Pinter. He now runs Award-Winning Quest Theatre Company (founded 1990) which participates at International Arts Festivals abroad.

The International School of Screen Acting is his latest venture which is serving to consolidate his broad background experience and which also serves 'hopefully' to deliver more to ISSA students, Improves the flow by helping lessen awkward grammar effect of quick repetition of ‘which’. His professional work in acting and directing has taken him to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Eire and  as far afield as Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, former Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania.

In 1996 he gained his Master’s degree in Anthropology of Art at University College London, where he specialised in the Anthropology of Performance, Ceremony, ritual and Ethnographic Film Making. When not at ISSA he is engaged in Cognitive Anthropology, namely in brain scanning studies in ‘Role-play’’ and ‘Pretend play’ at the Wellcome Centre for Neuro -Imaging Science. He is currently engaged in designing an experiment to investigate ‘Art & the Brain’ with Charles Whitehead PhD.
His research interests focus on the performing and visual arts as forms of social display, and their significance for the evolution of the social brain.

He has spoken at International science conferences in Arizona and Hong Kong.