Jacqui Singer

Jacqui Singer (19**-) Actress, director, teacher.

Biography

Training

She trained at the University of Cape Town Drama School.

Career

She joined The Space as a founder member in the 1972 followed by ten years of freelancing for CAPAB, PACT, the Baxter and the Market. In 1984 she joined PACT Drama as a permanent company member.

She had a once-a-week teaching post at at the University of the Witwatersrand in the 1990s. In 20** became a lecturer in drama at the University of Cape Town.

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

Performed in People are Living There, Gilgamesh, Scarborough, Drums in the Night, A Flea in her Ear, A Macbeth, Marat/Sade, Lysistrata SA (as “Liza”), Medea (as “Creusa’), The Homecoming (as “Ruth”), Boeing Boeing (as “Judith”), Travesties ( as “Gwendolen”), Tartuffe (as “Dorine”).

Acted in Slag, Superman, Thirteen Clocks, Tinkle Tinkle, Tsafendas, What the Butler Saw, The Exception and the Rule, The Flounder Complex, The Four Seasons, Fragments, Futz, The Happy Prince, Kitsch, Lysistrata S.A., Macrune’s Guevara, Medea, Miss South Africa and Tooth of Crime. She also directed The Happy Prince for The Space.

She starred in Donald Howarth’s Ibchek, directed by its author, together with Annabel Linder, Frantz Dobrowsky, Danny Keogh and Elaine Proctor at Upstairs at the Market in 1979.

She appeared in a Baxter Theatre production of The Lover and The Dumb Waiter in January 1980.

She starred in Pieter-Dirk Uys's The Rise and Fall of the First Empress Bonaparte together with Ron Smerczak and Michael McCabe which was directed by William Egan and staged by PACT at the Alexander Theatre in August 1983.

She starred in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? together with Michael McCabe, Andrew Buckland and Carol-Ann Kelleher which was directed by William Egan at the Alexander Theatre for PACT in May 1984.

Together with Nomhle Nkonyeni, Clare Stopford, Nandi Nyembe and Aletta Bezuidenhout she workshopped and starred in Ulovane Jive which was the opening production of the Windybrow Theatre circa 1986.

She starred in Chekhov in Yalta together with Frantz Dobrowsky, Michael McCabe and James Borthwick under Richard Haines's direction in 1986, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya together with Frantz Dobrowsky, Michael McCabe, James Borthwick, Shelagh Holliday and Charlotte Butler under Richard Haines's direction in 1986, PACT’s annual pantomime Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Alexander Theatre in 1991, Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King's Horseman in 1992, Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, in The Substance of Fire and in Three Hotels in 1993, Broken Glass (1995).

On television she was seen as the Greek mother in The Big Time II and has featured in two films: Shadowplay and Via Namibia.

As director

She directed The Caretaker in 1991. She has directed four of Harry Kalmer's plays including Watercolour Days. Other plays include Ulovane Jive, Little Big World and Plastics.

Awards, etc

She won a Best Actress Three-Leaf Award in 1973 for The Four Seasons, and the Three Leaf Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1978 for Homecoming.

Nominee 1991 in Callaway; Farce (Margaret Inglis Award for best actress in a supporting role in English); in Ghetto (Margaret Inglis Award for best actress in a supporting role in English).

As director she won a Fleur du Cap Award for Best Director for Grace and Glorie(1998).

Sources

SACD 1973; 1977/78; 1978/79; 1980/81.

Tartuffe theatre programme, 1978.

The Substance of Fire programme notes, 1993.

Tucker, 1997.

Go to ESAT Bibliography

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