Jill Girard
Jill Girard (19*-) is an actress, director and company manager. (Her names are often wroingly spelled, as "Gill" and as "Gerard")
Biography
As a child, she studied with Rita Maas, and started her professional career as a child actor in a production of Daddy Long Legs with Diane Todd and Bob Courtney. She completed her degree in Drama at ** and then went to Drama School in London.
In England she performed in several plays including the British premieres of plays by Thornton Wilder and Tenessee Williams, and appeared at the annual Shaw Festival at Ayot St. Lawrence, and the Kensington Arts Festival.
She has directed for both television and theatre, but has always preferred live theatre.
Her contribution to South African theatre, film, media and performance
On her return to Cape Town, she worked at the Space Theatre, Nico Malan Theatre for CAPAB. In this time she met Henry Goodman, who introduced her to children's theatre.
Her work in children's theatre
Initally working with Joyce Levinsohn, she sought to resurrect theatre for children, after the demise of the Children's Theatre Organization. They initally worked under the name of the Children's Theatre, doing The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen at the Sandown Hall in 1980, an Easter holiday production, Tales of Beatrix Potter at the Intimate Theatre in 1983, The Wizard of Oz and Aladdin at the Intimate Theatre in 1986 and an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories in the old elephant house at the Johannesburg Zoo in the same year.
She then went on to form her own company, People's Theatre, based at the Intimate Theatre. They presented Winnie the Pooh and The Wizard of Oz in 1991, Peter Pan in 1992 and with the backing of Nedbank and Penguin Publishers, she took a tour of Peter Rabbit and Other Tales to Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban in 1993. Keith Smith became a partner in the company and they later made the Joburg Theatre Complex (formally the Johannesburg Civic Theatre) its home, where it does 8 productions a year.
Other productions include The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, the centenary production of Peter Rabbit, Cinderella, The Magic of Walt Disney, Gingerbread Man, Babe and at OFF BROADWAY, Absolutely Fabulously Broadway, My Way and Voila Moulin Rouge.
(Tucker, 1997)
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