Profile: Mary Dormer Harris
Loft credits (click a play title to view details)
- Ftatatieta, Caesar and Cleopatra (1935)
- Good Angel, Doctor Faustus (1935)
- Emmie, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1935)
- Mrs Pierce, Three and Indivisible (1933)
- Ranskaya, The Rumour (1930)
- Mrs Barthwick, The Silver Box (1923)
Notes
From the website of the Leamington History Group:
Mary Dormer Harris was a remarkable woman. Multi-talented, hard-working, an enthusiastic party-giver with a great zest for life, she had a wide circle of friends young and old. She wrote and published books and plays, lectured in local history at the University of Birmingham and was Vice-President of the Workers’ Education Association and an associate of the Dugdale Society. She was an ardent suffragist, one of the first female members of the Leamington Literary Society and a founder member of the Loft Theatre.
Mary was indeed present at the first meeting of what was to become the Loft Theatre Company, on 5 May 1922, where she was appointed to the club’s committee. Besides acting in productions, she also saw two of her own plays staged at the original Loft in Bedford Street – The Waters of Forgetfulness and St George and the Dragon. The Warwickshire Directory notes:
She was well known for her parties at her home at 16 Gaveston Road, Leamington, which might start with earnest readings from Shakespeare or Shaw, but then develop into riotous charades.
In March 1936, at the age of 68, Mary was knocked down and killed while crossing the road in the dark near her home. In 1938, a bursary scheme was set up in her name, to benefit young people going on to further education; it still awards a grant each year, now typically around £750, to a promising local student.
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