Sheila Meiring

Sheila Meiring (1932-) is an actress, a playwright, and a published author and poet (under the name Sheila Fugard).

Born in Birmingham, England in 1932, but moved to Cape Town with her parents in 1940. She studied drama University of Cape Town and began to write short stories.

She married Athol Fugard in September 1956, and the couple have one daughter, actress and novelist Lisa Fugard.

After the birth of Lisa and their retirement to Port Elizabeth in 1972, Sheila concentrated on her own writing, while Fugard worked with the Serpent Players. Her first novel, The Castaways, won the Olive Schreiner Prize in 1972, then followed Rite of Passage (1976) and A Revolutionary Woman (1983).

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
She met Athol Fugard when she acted in one of his plays and they married in September 1956. The couple then founded Circle Players in Cape Town in the 1950s. She collaborated with him on a number of his early works for Circle Players, as she would do later on works such as No Good Friday (1958).

When they moved to Johannesburg, she worked as an actress for NTO in Pretoria for a while, while Fugard was employed as stage manager.

Among the roles she played were ****, ***.

Awards, etc
The Olive Schreiner Prize in 1972 for The Castaways.

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