Zoe Randall
(19**-2***). Actress. ***
Contents
Biography
She was married to John Wright for a while, and directed some of his puppet productions.
Training
In England she took ballet lessons with Miriam Kirsch. She and Lionel Bowman formed a partnership and danced trios with Patricia Hussey, winning first prize at many Eisteddfods.
She also worked as stage manager, i.a. on 'Moonlight Flitting (at the Whitehall Theatre, 1938),
Career
She performed for the Gwen ffrangçon-Davies / Marda Vanne Company which presented seasons of plays during the war years (between 1941 and 1946) at The Standard Theatre. Later she worked for Pieter Toerien, CAPAB and other companies in Cape Town.
During the 1960s she worked in Britain at various theatres.She has made many television appearances in the UK.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
She played the role of the Daughter in Rollo Gamble’s production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1938.
She has appeared in Heartbreak House (1942), Mourning Becomes Electra (Hofmeyr Theatre, 1942), Martine (1943), Flare Path (1943-4), Milestones (1944), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1945), The Wind of Heaven (1946), A Month in the Country (1946), Black Limelight (1948), Ring Round the Moon (Brian Brooke Company, 1953), Johnny Belinda (Brian Brooke Company, 1954), Bell, Book and Candle (1956), The Rainmaker (Cockpit Players, 1956), Separate Tables (Cockpit Players, 1958), The Matchmaker (Cockpit Players, 1958).
She had a role in the stage version of Try for White (Cockpit Players, 1959) as well as in the 1965 BBC filmed version.
Other productions include Suite in Three Keys (1968), The Apple Cart (NAPAC, 1968), The Importance of Being Earnest (NAPAC circa 1968), Proposals and Disposals a programme of her own devising (NAPAC, 1968), Crime on Goat Island (NAPAC, 1969), The School for Scandal (1969).
She starred in the Langford-Inglis Company and Hymie Udwin production of Old Ladies together with Margaret Inglis and Bess Finney at the Alexander Theatre in 1971.
She had roles in Present Laughter (CAPAB, 1974 and 1987), Arms and the Man (CAPAB, 1977), A Delicate Balance (1978), Tartuffe (CAPAB, 1978), Wholly Matrimony (1979), Dear Liar (1981), Uncle Vanya (1982).
She starred in the Baxter Theatre production of Aleksei Arbuzov’s Old-World together with John Carson and directed by Rosalie van der Gucht at the Leonard Rayne Theatre in 1984.
She played Miss Weatherbury in Fiela se Kind, CAPAB, 1986.
Later roles include those in The Boys Next Door (Baxter Theatre, 1986), Richard II (1990), Murder in the Cathedral Cape Town, 1992) and The Importance of Being Earnest (CAPAB, 1993).
Awards, etc
In 2002 received a Fleur du Cap Theatre Award, Best Supporting Actress in 1978, and a Fleur du Cap Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to South African theatre in 2001.
Sources
Tucker, 1997: 13.
Vertolkende Kunste, HSRC. 1972.
John Zachariah Diutlwileng Ntsepe. 2009. The life and career of South African pianist and teacher Lionel Bowman (1919-2006)[1]
J.P. Wearing. 2014. The London Stage 1930-1939: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel, p. 716 [2]
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