Marie van Heerden

VAN HEERDEN, Marie (1924 - 1987). Actress (earlier as Marie Viljoen), highly respected director and founder member of the Libertas Teaterklub in Stellenbosch. Both her sons, Johann van Heerden and Marcel van Heerden, also became well-known professional performers and theatre practitioners.

Marie Viljoen matriculated at Jan Van Riebeeck High School in Cape Town in 1939, then did a three-year course in Elocution and Drama under Sr Hyacinth Skene, Leonie Pienaar and Aletta Gericke in Cape Town and, after completing the final practical examinations, received her A.T.C.L. (Associate Trinity College London) in 1942. Between 1940 and 1948 she appeared in fourteen professional productions (taking ten leading roles) in the theatre companies of André Huguenet, Wena Naudé and André Rousseau. While still studying, as an eighteen-year old in 1942, she started acting in amateur productions of the KAT in Cape Town, like Die Hoogste Reg and Die Spaanse Vlieg, while also acting in radio-dramas for the SABC. In 1947 she joined the André Rousseau Theatre Company as a full-time professional actress in the touring production of Liefde in Satyn, followed by Eerloos.

After her marriage in 1947 she moved back to Cape Town and in 1952 to Stellenbosch, after the birth of her two sons. In 1960 she joined the Libertas Teaterklub as an actress and director and she starred in Onderdrukte Begeertes, one of the one-act plays in the amateur society's first production. Plays she directed for the Libertas Teaterklub included André P. Brink's Die Tas (1965), Hugo Claus’s Bruid in die môre (1977), J.P. Sartre’s In Camera (1976) and Hennie Aucamp’s Wolf, Wolf hoe laat is dit? (1974).

While acting in, or directing, many Libertas Teaterklub productions, first in The Cellar and later in their theatre in Bird Street, she also acted in a number of productions for the Universiteitsteater Stellenbosch, like Die Lewe wat ek jou Gegee het in 1964 and Antigone in 1965.

In 1964 she won the award as Best Actress, opposite Louis Eksteen, winner of the award as Best Actor, at the ATKV Amateur Toneelkompetisie at the annual ATKV drama festival in Bloemfontein for their performances in André P. Brink's Die Koffer staged by the Libertas Teaterklub.