Ann Jellicoe

Patricia Ann Jellicoe (15 July 1927 – 31 August 2017) was an English playwright, theatre director and actress. Although her work covered many areas of theatre and film, she is best known for "pushing the envelope" of the stage play, devising new forms which challenge and delight unconventional audiences. As a result, her dramatic career is, in many ways, unique in the twentieth century. Jellicoe was born in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire in England in 1927 and from childhood showed an interest and an aptitude for the theatre. She attended Polam Hall School and Queen Margaret's School, York and studied performing arts at the Central School of Speech and Drama. This was followed by experience in repertory and fringe theatre.In 1949, she was commissioned to undertake an investigative study into the relationship between acting and theatre architecture; the finding of this study led her to the Open stage. Jellicoe established a Sunday Theatre Club (Cockpit Theatre Club) where she produced and directed a number of plays exploring the possibilities of this form of Open stage theatre, including a one-act of her own.Thereafter, Jellicoe used many of her plays to further explore her innovative ideas on theatre. In 1956, The Observer established a playwright's competition to find new talent. Jellicoe submitted The Sport of My Mad Mother, which won a prize in the competition. In writing this play Jellicoe applied many of the ideas she had learnt in her early years at Central School. The play was subsequently staged by the Royal Court Theatre and directed by George Devine and Jellicoe. Although originally a commercial failure, the play was later performed internationally in many languages. Set in a Cockney neighbourhood of London, it combines realism, mysticism, music, dance, and ritual to create a powerful, feminist myth about modern civilisation. Jellicoe revised the original 1958 version in 1962 to create a better play.The play's title derives from a Hindu religious saying: "All creation is the sport of my mad mother Kali" (a Hindu goddess). However, as most Londoners know, "the sport of me mad mother" is also a Cockney expression implying something highly unusual.Jellicoe's best known play is The Knack first performed at the Royal Court in 1962. A major hit, the play was later adapted into a film version which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Directed by Richard Lester; the film's cast included Michael Crawford and Rita Tushingham. In it a group of young, London adults clash and commiserate about how to get "the knack" with the opposite sex. Jellicoe has also written plays for children.One of Jellicoe's most interesting works is a brief essay entitled, "Some Unconscious Influences in the Theatre." In a space of about thirty pages, she devises a number of complex yet common-sense theories which account for the reasons why audiences react to stage and screen as they do.