Marjorie Lynette Sigley
Encyclopedia
Marjorie Lynette Sigley (22 December 1928 - 13 August 1997), also known as Sigi, was a British
artist
, writer
, actress, teacher
, choreographer, theatre director and television producer
. She was instrumental in establishing, developing and promoting forms of youth theatre and television in both the United Kingdom
and the United States of America.
Sigley came from "a solid, very traditional" working-class family in Buxton
, Derbyshire
, where her father worked for ICI
and her mother was a professional cook
. From the age of 10, she became an avid consumer of movies and plays, going to everything that was staged at the Buxton repertory theatre. As a student she attended Goldsmith's College, London
, studying theatre, music and dance.
She was awarded a fellowship at Manchester University's drama department and it was there that she began to develop her (then novel) concept of children's drama. She became involved in theatre workshops and participation theatre, taking groups of her students to the Brighton Festival
with their work. She was later to direct the Malcolm Williamson
opera Julius Caesar Jones as part of the festival's opera workshops.
She returned to London to a teaching career, which she combined with her drama activities. At Markfield and Woodlands Park Schools in North London, she began by adapting stage classics for performance by young children who mostly come from underprivileged backgrounds. The children were also encouraged to write, cast, design, produce and star in their own productions. In 1960, Marjorie founded the City Literary Drama Company. This presented its own work, ranging from original pantomimes to experimental mime and movement workshops at the City Lit Theatre, with people such as Ronald Smith Wilson, Claud Newman, and Dorothea Alexander. In 1968 the company visited Warsaw
, Leningrad
and Moscow
with its children's drama programmes.
In the meantime she worked as a director and writer at the Mermaid Theatre
, notably directing a stage version of Erich Kästner
's Emil and the Detectives. She was invited for two spells, 1962 and 1968–69, at the Habimah National Theatre of Israel
and in 1964 did a Youth Theatre tour of Czechoslovakia
.
She had also taken the step into television in 1964 when she was invited to demonstrate what children's drama could achieve in a late-night ABC programme. Her contribution, which graphically demonstrated how the potentially destructive energies of teenage boys in a London suburb could be channelled creatively, made a profound impression. She was busy in television thereafter, one of her most striking contributions being Wonderworld
, two 13-part series in which children in the 5-6 and 15-16 age groups, dramatised and acted stories from the Bible.
In 1965 Marjorie Sigley introduced the Five O'Clock Funfair (Rediffusion, 1965) a spin-off series which regularly featured amongst others, music icons Lulu
and Alexis Korner
.
Like all her programmes, these were outstanding for their intimate engagement with the lives and opinions of children. In 1966, she formed the Young People's Theatre Project to train primary school teachers on how to bring her methods into the classroom. And in 1969 she also ran workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company
at the Roundhouse
and the Brighton Festival, which were significant forerunners of the educational programmes run by arts institutions today. In the autumn of the same year she delivered a talk on Children's Drama to the Youth Libraries Group.
watched one of Sigley's workshops at the Roundhouse and was so impressed by its revolutionary methods she invited her to New York
. There Marjorie directed plays at the renowned Herbert Berghof
(H.B.) Studios, Bank Street, New York, and also founded the Young People's Theater at City Center, which she directed from 1969 to 1975 where, with a group of actors, she wrote and staged 45 plays for children, as well as directing workshops involving them in the creation and performance of their own shows. Correspondence between Uta Hagan and Marjorie Sigley is held by The New York Public Library. In 1970 the Prime Minister
Edward Heath
gave a speech supporting and praising Marjorie's youth theatre work. Also around this time (1971–1974) she became friends with Lucy Kroll, the founder and grande dame of Kroll Agency. Correspondence between Sigley and Kroll is held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress
, Washington, D.C.
.
She remained in the United States for several years more, founding and running her own company, Sigley's Young People's Theatre in New York in 1976, before moving to Los Angeles
the following year to write a screenplay. In 1977 she was awarded the Jennie Heiden Award for her work with children's theatre, by the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE).
Sigley's phenomenally buoyant energy found outlets in many other projects. She wrote several plays, such as Take A Fable - a children’s musical about an Animal Bill of Rights. It was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival
, England, then produced successfully in New York as well as other Eastern states. In 1977 Take a Fable was performed by the Children's Touring Theatre Company of Stage West whose performance gained an entry in The Best Play's of 1976-1977. She also directed an opera for the Brighton Festival. In 1978 she wrote the award-winning ABC special One of a Kind, and in 1980 wrote and co-produced the feature film Never Never Land. Never Never Land (1979) originally known as Second to the Right and Straight on Until Morning starred Petula Clark
and Anne Seymour as a seven-year old girl, unhappy and isolated as a result of her parents' divorce, she escapes by recreating a modern-day version of the Peter Pan myth.
Nevertheless, at Thames she set to work with her usual enthusiasm and energy to try to improve things, and was able to bring some highly stimulating work to the screen. Among this was the series The Wall Game
, which had classes of schoolchildren involved in constructional building and improvisation. The series was chosen to represent Britain at the 1985 Tokyo World Fair. The T-Bag
was set round a wicked witch and a small boy who assists her, while C.A.B was a mystery detection series for 8 to 11-year-olds.
Another writer of the series, Grant Cathro corroborated:
. Her subjects were predominantly influenced by the theatre, and were bold and expressive especially in the use of colour and the large format she favoured. After leaving Thames in 1986 she maintained both her live drama and television work, but devoted a larger amount of time to her artwork. In the late 1980s an exhibition of her work titled Recent Prints was held at the Footstool Gallery, St John Smith Square, London. Her artwork is now (posthumously) represented by Pieta Fine Art Ltd.
In 1994, when her cancer was diagnosed, she bought a computer and desk-top published children's books about two stage-struck teddy bears. The dauntless spirit of her heroes Algie and Worthing reflects Sigley's own untiring curiosity, her humour, and her love affair with her work. Marjorie died of cancer aged 68 on August 13, 1997.
In 1999 a play Marjorie adapted was posthumously published in an anthology of festive plays. The Mummers' play was originally adapted by Marjorie for presentation by students and faculty of the H.B. Studio, a theatre school in New York City as a holiday gift to their families and friends. The play begins as men of the village arrive in the local tavern to be cast in an amateur production of St. George and the Dragon. Silliness reigns as the participants are cast in their roles for a variety of reasons—none of which have anything to do with talent. The second act is the performance of the play, granting "real" actors an opportunity to play wonderfully broad and physical comedy. The play does require a large cast of eighteen or more. All action takes place within the confines of the village hall, with minimal props. This script offers an excellent opportunity for ensemble work. It does require the cast to sing, but great musical skill is not a necessity.
Books:
Plays:
Film:
Television:
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, actress, teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
, choreographer, theatre director and television producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
. She was instrumental in establishing, developing and promoting forms of youth theatre and television in both the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States of America.
Life and work
Marjorie Sigley was born on December 22, 1928, known to everyone as "Sigi", she took passionate pleasure in the arts and would travel huge, impractical distances to see a play, a ballet or an opera. But she also believed in art as an educational force, and her greatest achievement lay in pioneering many of the attitudes towards children's drama that we now take for granted. Sigley not only introduced thousands of children to what she called "the wonder of theatre", she also involved them directly in the making of it.Sigley came from "a solid, very traditional" working-class family in Buxton
Buxton
Buxton is a spa town in Derbyshire, England. It has the highest elevation of any market town in England. Located close to the county boundary with Cheshire to the west and Staffordshire to the south, Buxton is described as "the gateway to the Peak District National Park"...
, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
, where her father worked for ICI
ICI
ICI or Ici may mean:* ICI programming language, a computer programming language developed in 1992* Ici , an alternative weekly newspaper in Montreal, CanadaICI is also an abbreviation which may mean:...
and her mother was a professional cook
Cook (profession)
A cook is a person who prepares food for consumption. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Canada this profession requires government approval ....
. From the age of 10, she became an avid consumer of movies and plays, going to everything that was staged at the Buxton repertory theatre. As a student she attended Goldsmith's College, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, studying theatre, music and dance.
She was awarded a fellowship at Manchester University's drama department and it was there that she began to develop her (then novel) concept of children's drama. She became involved in theatre workshops and participation theatre, taking groups of her students to the Brighton Festival
Brighton Festival
The Brighton Festival is an annual arts festival which takes place in the city of Brighton and Hove in England each May. It was founded in 1966, and is the largest multi-art form festival in England...
with their work. She was later to direct the Malcolm Williamson
Malcolm Williamson
Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson AO , CBE was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen's Music from 1975 until his death.-Biography:...
opera Julius Caesar Jones as part of the festival's opera workshops.
She returned to London to a teaching career, which she combined with her drama activities. At Markfield and Woodlands Park Schools in North London, she began by adapting stage classics for performance by young children who mostly come from underprivileged backgrounds. The children were also encouraged to write, cast, design, produce and star in their own productions. In 1960, Marjorie founded the City Literary Drama Company. This presented its own work, ranging from original pantomimes to experimental mime and movement workshops at the City Lit Theatre, with people such as Ronald Smith Wilson, Claud Newman, and Dorothea Alexander. In 1968 the company visited Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
with its children's drama programmes.
In the meantime she worked as a director and writer at the Mermaid Theatre
Mermaid Theatre
The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre at Puddle Dock, in Blackfriars, in the City of London and the first built there since the time of Shakespeare...
, notably directing a stage version of Erich Kästner
Erich Kästner
Emil Erich Kästner was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known for his humorous, socially astute poetry and children's literature.-Dresden 1899–1919:...
's Emil and the Detectives. She was invited for two spells, 1962 and 1968–69, at the Habimah National Theatre of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and in 1964 did a Youth Theatre tour of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
.
She had also taken the step into television in 1964 when she was invited to demonstrate what children's drama could achieve in a late-night ABC programme. Her contribution, which graphically demonstrated how the potentially destructive energies of teenage boys in a London suburb could be channelled creatively, made a profound impression. She was busy in television thereafter, one of her most striking contributions being Wonderworld
Wonderworld (musical)
Wonderworld is a musical with lyrics by Stanley Styne and music by Jule Styne written specifically for presentation at the 1964 New York World's Fair's huge 11,000-seat amphitheatre. The large-scale "aqua-stage spectacle" used 250 performers and starred Chita Rivera...
, two 13-part series in which children in the 5-6 and 15-16 age groups, dramatised and acted stories from the Bible.
In 1965 Marjorie Sigley introduced the Five O'Clock Funfair (Rediffusion, 1965) a spin-off series which regularly featured amongst others, music icons Lulu
Lulu (singer)
Lulu Kennedy-Cairns, OBE , best known by her stage name Lulu, is a Scottish singer, actress, and television personality who has been successful in the entertainment business from the 1960s through to the present day...
and Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
.
Like all her programmes, these were outstanding for their intimate engagement with the lives and opinions of children. In 1966, she formed the Young People's Theatre Project to train primary school teachers on how to bring her methods into the classroom. And in 1969 she also ran workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
at the Roundhouse
Roundhouse
A roundhouse is a building used by railroads for servicing locomotives. Roundhouses are large, circular or semicircular structures that were traditionally located surrounding or adjacent to turntables...
and the Brighton Festival, which were significant forerunners of the educational programmes run by arts institutions today. In the autumn of the same year she delivered a talk on Children's Drama to the Youth Libraries Group.
America
In 1968, the American actress Uta HagenUta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...
watched one of Sigley's workshops at the Roundhouse and was so impressed by its revolutionary methods she invited her to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. There Marjorie directed plays at the renowned Herbert Berghof
Herbert Berghof
Herbert Berghof was an Austrian American actor, director and acting coach. He co-founded HB Studio in New York City with his wife Uta Hagen in 1945...
(H.B.) Studios, Bank Street, New York, and also founded the Young People's Theater at City Center, which she directed from 1969 to 1975 where, with a group of actors, she wrote and staged 45 plays for children, as well as directing workshops involving them in the creation and performance of their own shows. Correspondence between Uta Hagan and Marjorie Sigley is held by The New York Public Library. In 1970 the Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Edward Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
gave a speech supporting and praising Marjorie's youth theatre work. Also around this time (1971–1974) she became friends with Lucy Kroll, the founder and grande dame of Kroll Agency. Correspondence between Sigley and Kroll is held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
.
She remained in the United States for several years more, founding and running her own company, Sigley's Young People's Theatre in New York in 1976, before moving to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
the following year to write a screenplay. In 1977 she was awarded the Jennie Heiden Award for her work with children's theatre, by the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE).
Sigley's phenomenally buoyant energy found outlets in many other projects. She wrote several plays, such as Take A Fable - a children’s musical about an Animal Bill of Rights. It was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
, England, then produced successfully in New York as well as other Eastern states. In 1977 Take a Fable was performed by the Children's Touring Theatre Company of Stage West whose performance gained an entry in The Best Play's of 1976-1977. She also directed an opera for the Brighton Festival. In 1978 she wrote the award-winning ABC special One of a Kind, and in 1980 wrote and co-produced the feature film Never Never Land. Never Never Land (1979) originally known as Second to the Right and Straight on Until Morning starred Petula Clark
Petula Clark
Petula Clark, CBE is an English singer, actress, and composer whose career has spanned seven decades.Clark's professional career began as an entertainer on BBC Radio during World War II...
and Anne Seymour as a seven-year old girl, unhappy and isolated as a result of her parents' divorce, she escapes by recreating a modern-day version of the Peter Pan myth.
Thames Television
In 1983, she returned to England to become controller of children's programmes at Thames Television. She was critical of what she saw as the dumbing down of television, believing it had lost its confidence both as an educator of children's minds and as a catalyst for their imaginations.Nevertheless, at Thames she set to work with her usual enthusiasm and energy to try to improve things, and was able to bring some highly stimulating work to the screen. Among this was the series The Wall Game
The Wall Game
The Wall Game was a 1985 children's television game show produced by Thames Television for ITV. The show was based around the idea of a theatre workshop and would see two groups of contestants building sets from pieces of a giant wall, then improvise a play...
, which had classes of schoolchildren involved in constructional building and improvisation. The series was chosen to represent Britain at the 1985 Tokyo World Fair. The T-Bag
T-Bag
T-Bag is a witch-like character who appears in a number of television programmes which ran from the mid-80s to early 90s on Children's ITV. Written by Grant Cathro and Lee Pressman, each series has a different title and features a single story told over several episodes.-History:The programme was...
was set round a wicked witch and a small boy who assists her, while C.A.B was a mystery detection series for 8 to 11-year-olds.
T-Bag
Lee Pressman one of the writers on T-bag, recounted:
the idea for the series started when the head of children's television at Thames, Marjorie Sigley, decided that she wanted to make a series of "educational" shows about words and letters of the alphabet. The first of the shows was "Words words words", a mishmash of cobbled together sketches, songs and poems. I had been writing BBC's "Play Away" (a far superior light entertainment fest), and Thames TV blatantly asked me whether I had any unused stuff in my bottom drawer that I could contribute to "Words" since they were a tad short on material. Little did I know that many other writers were being asked the very same question... and one of them was Grant Cathro. And that's where we met.After that short-lived series, Marjorie asked me to come up with an idea that would feature letters of the alphabet this time. I pitched something which I believe was called "Dotty in Dictionaria" - a story about a young girl who travels across a board game where every square features a different letter of the alphabet. There were various suggestions for adventures such as "Revenge of the Killer B" on the 'B' square, etc. and so on.When I was given the go ahead to develop the series (at very short notice), I contacted Grant and asked if he wanted to help write it.
Another writer of the series, Grant Cathro corroborated:
Lee and I first met in a South London rehearsal room, where five frantic grinning actors were hurriedly trying to learn their parts in comedy sketches which Lee and I had been commissioned to write independently. The show was called "Words, Words, Words" (or as it became affectionately known, "Worst, Worst, Worst"), the brainchild of Marjorie Sigley, Head of Children's Programmes at Thames TV. She was trying to disguise education-based material as pure light entertainment, which seemed quite an interesting challenge. Other writers were involved too, but somehow Lee and I became the main contributors and so we began seeing a lot of each other's work at the following readthroughs. I thought Lee's stuff was annoyingly good, and he thought my stuff was irritatingly splendid, so when Lee was later given the go-ahead to develop a comedy-drama which shared similar aspirations to the one-off "Words" series, he rang and asked if I would like to collaborate. Up until this time I had trained and worked mostly as an actor (Glasgow Citizens Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Royal Shakespeare Company) but because I also loved writing (and had a tax bill to pay) I immediately said "certainly".
Art and later life
Marjorie was also a very talented artist - she worked in a variety of mediums particularly favouring printmakingPrintmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
. Her subjects were predominantly influenced by the theatre, and were bold and expressive especially in the use of colour and the large format she favoured. After leaving Thames in 1986 she maintained both her live drama and television work, but devoted a larger amount of time to her artwork. In the late 1980s an exhibition of her work titled Recent Prints was held at the Footstool Gallery, St John Smith Square, London. Her artwork is now (posthumously) represented by Pieta Fine Art Ltd.
In 1994, when her cancer was diagnosed, she bought a computer and desk-top published children's books about two stage-struck teddy bears. The dauntless spirit of her heroes Algie and Worthing reflects Sigley's own untiring curiosity, her humour, and her love affair with her work. Marjorie died of cancer aged 68 on August 13, 1997.
In 1999 a play Marjorie adapted was posthumously published in an anthology of festive plays. The Mummers' play was originally adapted by Marjorie for presentation by students and faculty of the H.B. Studio, a theatre school in New York City as a holiday gift to their families and friends. The play begins as men of the village arrive in the local tavern to be cast in an amateur production of St. George and the Dragon. Silliness reigns as the participants are cast in their roles for a variety of reasons—none of which have anything to do with talent. The second act is the performance of the play, granting "real" actors an opportunity to play wonderfully broad and physical comedy. The play does require a large cast of eighteen or more. All action takes place within the confines of the village hall, with minimal props. This script offers an excellent opportunity for ensemble work. It does require the cast to sing, but great musical skill is not a necessity.
Work
Art exhibitions:- Footstool Gallery, St John Smith Square, London
Books:
- Three Harlequin Plays (1961) ISBN 9999016263
- Saint George and the dragon at Christmas tide (anonymous) adapted by Marjorie Sigley in Swortzell, L. (eds) The twelve plays of Christmas (1999) ISBN 1557834024
Plays:
- Take A Fable (1977?) Writer
- A Review in Mime and Movement - Director (London Theatre Company/Russia and Poland)
- The Stoppers (1967) - Director (performed as part of the Brighton Festival at the Palace Pier theatre)
- Timesneeze (1970) Director
Film:
- Georgy Girl (1966) choreographer
- Never Never Land (1979) Screenwriter (also known as Second to the Right and Straight on Until Morning)
- The Flowering Eye (1979) Screenwriter
- The Jumble
Television:
- One Of A Kind - (1978) writer & associate director
- Five O'Clock Funfair (1965) presenter
- London Line (1968)
- Algy And Worthing
- Catch Us If You Can
- C.A.B. (1986–1989) Executive Producer
- Danger - Marmalade At Work! (1984) producer
- Educating Marmalade producer
- Wonderworld
- T-Bag (1985–1992) Executive producer
- What's in a Game