Marjorie Lynette Sigley

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.

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 13 August 1997.

Marjorie was also a very talented artist – she worked in a variety of mediums particularly favouring printmaking. 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.

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.

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.

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 1976 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.

In 1968, the American actress Uta Hagen 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 Hagen 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..

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.

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.

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 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 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.

Marjorie Lynette Sigley (22 December 1928 – 13 August 1997), also known as Sigi, was an English 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.

Marjorie Sigley was born on 22 December 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.