Muriel Alexander

Muriel Alexander (1884-1975). Actress, influential theatre producer and teacher.

Biography

She was born in Cape Town, but grew up in Johannesburg where her Australian born father, Abraham Alexander, was a stockbroker. Her mother Rachel was a natural performer and instilled a love of theatre in her children.

A child prodigy, Muriel first performed in A Pantomime Rehearsal at the Standard Theatre in 1893. In 1896 they spent the year in London, where she had some formal schooling. In 1899 they moved to Natal to wait out the Boer War, returning to Johannesburg in 1902. She studied and worked in London from 1903 to 1909.

In 1909 she returned to South Africa to produce plays and act. She became the leading lady of the Howitt-Phillips Company. After briefly returning to London before the First World War, she settled permanently in South Africa in 1916.

Training

In 1903 she went to London to take classes in singing and elocution, and in 1904 became one of the first pupils at Herbert Beerbohm Tree's newly founded Academy of Dramatic Art[1].

Career

She became a member of Beerbohm Tree’s professional company for three years (1906-1909), playing in many of his standard works, as well as working for other companies in London in 1909. But then she had to return to Johannesburg with her mother, so she became a professional actress in South Africa, touring with the Howitt-Phillips Company.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

As actress

While with the touring with the Howitt-Phillips Company, she appeared in Bella Donna (1913). She also performed as actress for the Johannesburg Repertory Players in Romeo and Juliet (1949) and The House of Bernarda Alba (1952).

As director

Alexander directed a number of plays, including:

1917: Pinkie and the Fairies

1921: The Magic Key

1924: Make-Believe

1926: Do You Believe in Fairies?

1927: R.U.R. (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1927: The Merchant of Venice (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1931: Mrs Moonlight (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1931: And So to Bed (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1932: Heartbreak House (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1932: Dangerous Corner (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1936: Tobias and the Angel (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1937: The Sacred Flame (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1937: The Beaux Strategem (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1938: Touch Wood (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1938: Tonight at 8.30 (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1940s: The Man Who Came to Dinner (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1943: The Flashing Stream (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

1943: Joan of Lorraine (Johannesburg Repertory Players)

Over the years she also trained a large number of influential performers, including Moira Lister, Sidney James and Lawrence Harvey.

As playwright

Alexander also wrote a number of plays, including:

Do You Believe in Fairies? (1926, one-act play for children, written in collaboration with Bruce Lezard)

Things Change: 1928-1931 (early 1930s)

Love and the Boy' (late 1920s, early 1930s)

The Affair of the Studio

The Sacrifice

Sauce for the Goose

The plays are all unpublished, the manuscripts or typescripts held in the Johannesburg Public Library.

As arts champion

She founded the Alexander School of Drama and Elocution. In 1927 she founded the Johannesburg Repertory Playreading Society, which was renamed Johannesburg Repertory Society (The REPS) in 1928, for which she directed thirty-five of the productions between 1927 to 1947. She was instrumental in having the Johannesburg Repertory Theatre built (1951).

As chair of the REPS as well as a director, she was also an influential figure in the Federation of Amateur Theatrical Societies of South Africa (FATSSA) from 1937 to 1960.