He aspired to establish a permanent Australian performance ensemble, multi-skilled and committed, such as had been done by the Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski with whom he worked for a time, but there was not the audience, the assured funding nor the interest in Cramphorn's preference for non-commercial projects to achieve this.

[3] In a 1973 interview, Cramphorn described the kind of productions he hoped to create: I’m not interested in presenting the violence of life around me or its chaos and doubt.

[5] In these forthright, uncompromising and scholarly reviews, Cramphorn indicated initially that there was little that pleased him in the Sydney theatre scene, a view summarised by his metaphor "a withering mistletoe on our gum-tree culture".

[7] One of Cramphorn's earliest projects was at the 1968 Festival of Perth, where he designed the costumes for Aarne Neeme and Philip Parsons’ production of Richard III at the New Fortune Theatre (University of Western Australia).

[9][10][11][12][13] His capacity for empathising with actors,[13] encyclopaedic knowledge especially of all things French,[13] and "large pocket-Adonis" good looks[14] prompted many to seek his personal commitment.

In them may be read assessments such as: Among Cramphorn's effects were thirty boxes of papers which he bequeathed to the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney.