[1] Kent, who was brought up in Hampstead Garden Suburb,[1] was educated at Stowe School from 1958 to 1963[1] and at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read English from 1964 to 1967.
Kent also commissioned theatrical responses to the detentions at Guantánamo Bay, the 2011 London riots, and – in The Great Game – Britain's involvement in Afghanistan.
[3] Under Kent's direction, the Tricycle also presented the London premieres of many Irish plays, such as Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones,[4] as well as staging productions with an emphasis on Afro-Caribbean experience, such as Mustapha Matura's Playboy of the West Indies, Lara Foot Newton's Karoo Moose and the Not Black and White trilogy (comprising new plays by Kwame Kwei-Armah, Roy Williams and Bola Agbaje).
The theatre also saw the premieres of Kat and the Kings, a musical that won two Olivier Awards, and Patrick Barlow's adaptation of John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps.
[5] Kent chose to cease running the Tricycle following a £350,000 cut in the venue's annual artistic subsidy.