Cecil Williams
Cecil Williams (19**-1979). A school teacher by profession, also directed plays.
Contents
Biography
While in the South African Navy, Leonard Schach directed Leon Gluckman and Cecil Williams in The Middle Watch at the Little Theatre in 1944. which proved to be his last production before he was forced into permanent exile, 1962.
He died in London in 1979.
Youth
Training
Career
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
He directed Winterset (1953) and Ferenc Molnar’s Liliomin May 1953.
He directed plays for the East Rand Theatre Club and on occasion acted as adjudicator for the FATSSA Play Festival.
He directed the Children’s Theatre open-air production of The Merchant of Venice at the Zoo Lake in the summer of 1957 and at the Donaldson Orlando Community Centre.
For their two-hundredth production, the Reps presented The House by the Lake, directed by Cecil Williams and starring the West End actress Sonia Dresdel in 1957.
He directed a production of The Strong Are Lonely at the Library Theatre in June 1957.
He failed to draw audiences with Jean-Paul Sartre’s double bill, The Vicious Circle and The Respectable Prostitute at the Library Theatre in 1957. Towards the end of the same year, Cecil brought out British actor David Kossoff to star in The World of Sholom Aleichem.
He directed The Kimberley Train, which was staged at the Library Theatre in 1958 and in the same year The Long and the Short and the Tall.
He directed Guilty Party for the Reps in 1962.
Awards, etc
Sources
Tucker, 1997.
Obituary, The Star, 10 May 1979.
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