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Featured Member - November 2004
The
featured member for November is Judy Pinnock.
Born in England, Judy enjoyed theatre from an early age and
happily participated in all her school plays. Unfortunately,
having discovered a talent for swimming, her prowess in the
pool required lots of training which took up most of her time
and she had to give up acting. There were compensations however,
as she won many medals and trophies in competitive swimming.
Judy's
parents were members of an amateur filmmakers' club and she
recalls her father starring as a dagger-wielding madman in one
production and causing quite a stir, not to mention his picture
in the local newspaper, when his part required him to race out
of a shop, dagger in hand. She realised early on that acting
wasn’t all "glitz and glamour". She spent many
hours picking blackberries with her two sisters on one side
of a hedge while they were filming on the other and she can
remember when her dad had to stagger down the lane then collapse
on the verge. He was so engrossed in the part he ended up collapsing,
on cue, right in the middle of some stinging nettles and didn’t
move until he heard "Cut"! What a trouper!
She
left her home in a little village on the River Avon (downstream
from Shakespeare’s Stratford) and arrived in Western Australia
in 1966 on board the ship "Australis". During the
journey to Australia Judy was roped in as a mermaid in the "crossing
the line" ceremony, with a seaweed skirt made from crepe
paper that got wet from the pool and stained her legs green.
As the rest of her was bright red from windburn it created an
interesting contrast! Being slim and curvy in those days she
found herself playing a Hula dancer in one evening's entertainment
and a "harem favourite" in another. In the second
one she had the job of tickling the sheik with a feather before
and after he got up and did a fire eating/dancing act. As Judy
herself puts it, "Try tickling up a toga with the smell
of burnt leg hair filling your nostrils and having to smile!
(OK, it wasn't a toga, but I can't think what sheik's robes
are called!")
After
her arrival in WA, Judy started a career in nursing. Like most
people, working and bringing up children became her priorities
for several years and it wasn't until the age of 50, after losing
a couple of close family members, that she jumped in at the
deep end, joined an art society and volunteered to help out
with the Acorn theatre group, expecting to be backstage, painting
or props maybe. She doesn’t quite know how it happened,
but next minute she had a script in her hand and found she had
been cast in an English comedy. The laughter response from the
audience was so rewarding she was hooked and couldn’t
wait to join Melville, her local theatre group. Since then she
has appeared in “The Liver Birds”, “Heir Today,
Gone Tomorrow” and, most recently, the One-Acter, “Remains
to be Seen”, in addition to helping out Front-of House
for other productions.
Apart
from her acting ability Judy is a very talented artist who has
exhibited her work at Art Shows and has even sold some! (Wow,
that's better than Vincent Van Gogh did during his lifetime!)
Being ever willing to exploit members, MTC has so far talked
her into painting a London scene of Big Ben and the Houses of
Parliament for “The Killing of Sister George”. No
doubt she'll be talked into other artistic endeavours for us
in the future!
Judy has made many friends at Melville and really enjoys her
involvement. We enjoy having you with us Judy and thank you
for everything you've done!
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