Lewis Sowden

(19**-19**) Journalist, critic, dramatist and novelist.

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

Sowden was a highly respected theatre critic for Rand Daily Mail in 1940-1960s. As a theatre critic and historian wrote Two Sides of the Mask, the story of Muriel Alexander (19**). As a playwright he is best known for the highly successful The Kimberley Train (Written and performed in 1958, published in 1976), a play on miscegenation and the tragedy of characters to “trying for white” under the apartheid laws. Other plays include: The Fugitives (1934), The Man in Checks (1935), Red Rand (1937), The Gold Earth (1944) and Contact Five (1945).**??. SOWDEN, Lewis. He was the theatre critic for the Rand Daily Mail who anonymously wrote The Kimberley Train. The play exposed the racist attitude of South African society. It was directed by Cecil Williams, and staged at the Library Theatre in 1958. He was married to Dora Sowden, the music and film critic of the Rand Daily Mail. They left South Africa for Israel.

Sources

Tucker, 1997.

Sources

Tucker, 1997. 118-9, 141, 222.

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