Nicholas Stuart Gray was born on October 23, 1922, in Scotland. As a young boy, he made up stories and plays to amuse his brothers and sisters, and as a means of escape from a difficult family life. He left home as a teenager and began his lifelong career in the theater. Eventually he worked as a stage manager, actor, director, and playwright, and his first play was produced before he was twenty years old. As an actor, he starred in his own plays as well as those by Shakespeare and other classic playwrights.

In Britain in the early 1950s, few children attended the theater. At that time, virtually the only kind of theater considered suitable for children was pantomime. These plays were not the silent mime the name implies, but a hodgepodge mixture of a loose story line, songs based on pop music, comedy routines...