Hilary Blecher

Hilary Blecher (19*) Actress and director.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
As actress*? did *** Also worked with Barney Simon on a theatre for development project in the Winterveld in the late 1970s - and wrote up the results of the exercise in an article in Critical Arts (Vol 1, No 3, 1980).

Directing credits include Elsa Joubert’s Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena with Nomsa Nene (for The Company at the Market Theatre 1980), later in English as The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena, which she took to New York in 1983.

From 1981 to the mid 1990’s she worked in the USA, and there wrote and directed Frida: The Story of Frida Kahlo (1992) and Daughters of Nebo: An African Opera (or  The Sacrifice of Mmbatho - 1993/1994).

In the 1990s she returned to South Africa to work in television, becoming executive producer of Isidingo (1999-) and directing episodes of Zero Tolerance (2006)  **

Her daughter is the film maker Sara Blecher.

Awards
In 2000 she was nominated for an Avanti Award as Best Director for Isidingo.

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