Cairns James

Cairns James () was a British elocution teacher, , and actor manager.

Not to be confused with the South African actor and playwright from the late 20th century, James Cairns

Biography

Born Lewis Cairns James on 23 September 1866 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he died on 7 October 1946 in Gloucester,

His acting career started in musical comedy, and he performed as principal comic baritone for the D'Oyly Carte B touring company from July 1887 to September 1891, from which he progressed to become a stage manager of operas and later author of operas.

In the 1890s he became a professor of elocution at the Guildhall School of Music, leaving later to start his own School of Musical and Dramatic Art, focusing on stage work and specializing in musical comedy. His school had close links with George Edwardes.

James visited South Africa under the management of the Wheeler Brothers in 1894, playing the leads for a company popularly known as the Cairns James Company, and said by Boonzaier (1980) to have been the first Gaiety Company to visit South Africa, opening a season of plays in the Good Hope Theatre on 9 June, 1894.

The season began with a fine performance of In Town (Ross, Leader and Carr), followed by Mam'zelle Nitouche (Meilhac and Millaud), Miss Decima (Burnand), A Gaiety Girl (Hall).

Sources

Christopher Gullo. 2004. In All Sincerity, Peter Cushing. Xlibris Corporation: p.27[1]

Colin Chambers (ed). Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre. Bloomsbury: p.221[2]

D.C. Boonzaier, 1980. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

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