Gertie Awerbuch

Gertie Awerbuch (September 28, 1928 - November 2015) was born in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, was a stage actress and director[*?]

Early Life

Gertie Awerbach grew up in a boarding school which her Russian mother had set up to help Russian and Polish Jews assimilate into South African society. She matriculated with seven distinctions at Commercial College and later became a secretary with the Grinaker shipping company.

Contribution to South African Theatre

She devised a revue in the early 1960s, together with her then husband, Lithuanian-born Morris Awerbuch (who she married in 1951) and Miriam Lopert, called What Was, Was! This riotous show about life in the Jewish community , starring Charles Stodel, June Hern and Michael Fisher, was staged at the Jewish Guild and the Alexander Theatre in 1965. A humorous look at being Jewish in South Africa it was written in "Yinglish", a mixture of Yiddish and English. It was so popular that they did two more in the same year. She appears to have left theatre after this.

Sources

Tucker, 1997. 204.

"Obituary: Gertie Awerbuch, Doyenne of the Stage and the Kitchen" by Chris Barron, Sunday Times 15 November, 2015.

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