Celeste Litkie

Celeste Litkie (19*-2010) was an actress, cabaret artist, stage director, publicist, corporate theatre practitioner, and academic.

Biography

Born Celeste Avril Litkie, she studied at the Department of Speech and Drama of the University of Natal (Durban campus), obtaining a B.A. Hons in 1984, followed by an M.A., and, finally in 2003, a D.Phil in Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Stellenbosch with a thesis on Selected Black African Dramatists South of the Zambesi, co-supervised by Temple Hauptfleisch and Dennis Schauffer.

Married to Paul Zaloumis and had two children, Stephanie and Thomas. Later married Andreas Hadjidimitriadis.

Contribution to South African theatre, film, media and performance

As actress

She was among the five performers who started the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre Company. Also comprising Melanie Bowles, Mark Faith, Brenda Radloff and Themi Venturas, the company was created at the same time as NAPAC's Loft Theatre Company.

After this company had ceased to exist , she married, but continued as working as a freelance performing artist, acting for NAPAC in a number of plays before they moved to Cape Town for a while, before moving to Johannesburg briefly, where she worked again worked as a freelance performer both on stage and on television.

Her work as stage actress included roles in A Tale of Two Cities (1984), Athol Fugard's People are Living There (as Sissy); Winnie-the-Pooh (NAPAC, 1991-2); Mame (CAPAB, 1994); and in Tom Lehrer’s Tom Foolery (André Huguenet Theatre, 1989), .

TV roles included "Sophie" in Huis van Liefde (season 1) and "Betty Dixon" in Heartlines (season 1, as well as the 2006 feature film).

As director

Among the works she has directed are Guys and Dolls (for the University of Witwatersrand's Performing Arts Administration and The School of Music, 1987);

Work in Corporate Theatre

The family emigrated to Australia for a while in the 1990s, where Celeste discovered a new career path, and began writing, inter alia for the global brand experience agency VWV[1]. Thus, on returning to South Africa, she joined VWV to specialize in Corporate Theatre work, working her way to the position of Artistic Director for VWV and later also of the experiential communications company O'Mage[2]. In this period she handled some of the biggest launches in the country.

Despite a constant fight with a disabling illness, which led to her retirement from O'Mage, she and her second husband Andreas later founded the successful Corporate Theatre company Brown Paper Bag.

Sources

Tucker, 1997.

http://news.artsmart.co.za/2010/10/tribute-to-celeste-litkie.html

http://www.tvsa.co.za/actors/viewactor.aspx?actorid=8240

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