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Featured Member - April 2004

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Our featured member for April 2004, Joan Scafe became enchanted with theatre as a small child when her Grandma took her to pantomime each Christmas. To her delight, there were fairies who really flew!
In her final year at High School in Yorkshire she joined the drama group and, with the annual production coming up, put down her name for backstage. Her much respected English master asked her to reconsider but she was too nervous! Her soon-to-be brother-in-law persuaded her to change her mind, saying that she would be given only a "little part". That's how she finished up playing Elvira in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit!
Her success in the role resulted in her being invited to join her Church drama society where she played Mary of Magdala in a couple of productions and a suicide in Sutton Vane's Outward Bound. Happily she was a failed suicide and finished the play with a second chance!

Moving, marrying, becoming a mum intervened and Joan didn't tread the boards again until she was at Murdoch Uni. where she played Agaue in Euripides' The Bacchae, making her entrance carrying the severed head of her son and thinking that she had slain a lion, descending from euphoria to dispair with the realisation of what the gods had done to her.

A long hiatus followed until 1983 when she joined MTC for the Company's very first production playing Maud Bodley in 'Not Now Darling' This makes Joan the longest serving active member of the Company.
She has appeared in many plays over the intervening years, the last being this year as Lucille in 'The Cemetery Club'.
Although she doesn't build sets, she has involved herself in most other activities in the theatre and has done lots of painting, sorted props and wardrobe, FOH, Bookings and even, as a result of refurbishing the toilets, had the ladies' loo named after her! Such an honour!
Joan has served on the Committee many times in many positions over the last 21 years. She has been and still is, the Company's official Archivist and the wonderfully witty photograph albums you see in the Lounge are all Joan's work.

Although she has performed at several other theatres, Joan regards Melville as "home". She has had a great deal of pleasure from the association and urges anyone with an interest to become really involved.
Joan's great contribution to MTC was acknowledged when she was granted Life Membership, the highest honour our club can bestow.
Thank you Joan, for everything you have done and continue to do for the Melville Theatre Company.