Nancy Diuguid

Nancy Diuguid (1948-2003). Actress and theatre director [1]. Born in Kentucky USA and died in Johannesburg. Trained as an actor at The Central School of Speech and Drama in London. [2].

Diuguid settled in England in 1972 where she enjoyed an award-winning directorial career directing for the English National Opera Company, making films for Channel 4 and the British Film Institute and freelancing in Japan and Australia.

When she settled in Johannesburg in 1999, she met actress Nan Hamilton, a member of MaOyaMa, a group of six women (including Aletta Bezuidenhout) who asked her to direct a serious women's play for the millennium. One of her first projects in South Africa was to start an arts and drama group with male prisoners in Leeuwkop prison. Art, healing, and compassionate socialism were synonymous for Diuguid; it was a combination which, with a fiery perfectionism, sometimes came close to overwhelming her.

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

She directed A Writer's Last Word in 1998.

She co-wrote and co-directed the opera, earthdiving, in 2003.

Sources

Mail and Guardian, 12-18 June 1998.

Cape Times, 26 May 2003.

Ivan Meredith. 2006. 'Opera in South Africa during the first democratic decade'. Unpublished Masters thesis. University of Cape Town.

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