Edgar Perkins

Edgar Perkins was a theatre manager and director, originally based in the Transvaal in the late 19th century.

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

Perkins founded The Edgar Perkins Lyric Opera Company in the 1890s, taking it to Cape Town for the first time in January 1890, where they performed an impressive programme of light opera in the Exhibition Theatre, Cape Town for a season. He both managed and produced the company.

In 1893 he joined forces with A. Bonamici, the lessee of the newly built Opera House in Cape Town, renaming the company The Lyric Opera Company and once more undertaking an extensive programme of light comic opera.

According to D.C. Boonzaier (1923), reporting on the 1890 Cape Town season, Perkins had "very artistic ideas in the direction of mise-en-scène" and his operas were staged "lavishly in regard to scenery and costume".

Sources

D.C. Boonzaier. 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp. 389-390

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Author of an article on "Brett Bailey" in Middeke, Schnierer and Homann (2015). Martin Middeke, Peter Paul Schnierer and Greg Homann (editors). 2015. The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.