WOMAN PRESIDENT OF CHILDREN’S THEATRE

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 2

WOMAN PRESIDENT OF CHILDREN’S THEATRE

The wife of the vice-president of an American line of luxury ships arrived in Christchurch by air yesterday for an overnight stop with news of a girl from Timaru.

The visitor is Mrs Martha Bigelow Eliot, wife of the vice-presi-dent of the Matson Line. In California, where she lives, she is president of a board controlling a professional travelling theatre for children. In the theatre company is Mrs Ann Brebner, formerly Ann Donn, daughter of a dentist in Timaru, who left New Zealand about eight years ago to take up a scholarship to study drama in England and married her teacher, Mr John Brebner. Together Mr and Mrs Brebner went to America, worked there for some time, returned to England and found it “too cold” and went back to America again. Now they are both working in the theatre group which is Mrs Eliot’s chief interest now that her own family of four are all married. First Baby

Mrs Eliot said in Christchurch yesterday that Mrs Brebner lights the group’s plays and her husband is its leading player and technical director. They were just expecting their first baby.

Mrs Eliot herself directs and produces the plays that the company stages on tour at two performances a day for nine months of the year, playing mostly for schools up to junior high school standard, although often universities and high schools seek the company’s help in drama projects. The company plays anywhere where there is a stage and to audiences that may range from 200 to 3000. Although non-profit making the company is completely professional and sprang from a class in adult education which Mrs Eliot attended in San Francisco.

The class played a few performances for children and the idea mushroomed so they asked the principal if they could carry it on. Now the company plays to most schools around and in San Francisco. In the city the admission charge is 15 cents—although in a quiet ■ word with school principals Mrs Eliot asks that no child shall be turned away just because he doesn’t have the money. Truck is “Baby”

They carry their costumes, scenery and properties in a hired truck known as “Baby”—“l have no idea why,” said Mrs Eliot—and travel themselves in a car. They can set up in an hour and strike the show in three-quarters of an hour.

She thought that even In America the theatre was something unique, and that it attracted good players because in a very uncertain industry it was rare for them to find nine months steady employment in a year. One of the jobs that Mrs Eliot had to rush in when her husband told her one Thursday they were leaving on this two-months trip the next Monday was signing the company’s pay cheques for the time they will be away. Down to the Sea Mr Eliot is making this tour to appoint general passenger agents in Asia. So far he and Mrs Eliot have been to Honolulu, Tokyo, Yokohama, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Bangkok, Singapore, Sydney and Melbourne, where on Sunday they wandered down to the port just to look at the ships. “We were both brought up by the sea,” said Mrs Eliot, who was born in Boston. “We hate to be away from it.” They have mixed sea and air travel on this trip, and will go home from Auckland in one of the Matson liners, the Mariposa.

Among other things on the trip, as well as renewing many old friendships made when they were over here four years ago, Mrs Eliot has been reading scripts for the theatre company. She is always looking out for new ones, and has some sent to her in the places she has been visiting. The last one, in Sydney, was a musical, with a recording of the music with it.

In this, as with anything connected with the group, she finds her husband a great help. He is a member of the theatre board, and a distant cousin of the poetplaywright T. S. Eliot.