Rhoda Felgate

Rhoda Mary Felgate (1901 – 1990) was an Australian speech and drama teacher and theatre director. She founded the Twelfth Night Theatre in Brisbane in 1936.

Life
Felgate was born in Stoke Newington in 1901. Her parents were Alice Maude (born Willson) and her husband Gordon Felgate and they emigrated to Australia while she was still a baby. Her father travelled as a company representative. They made their home in Brisbane in 1910 where she attended Brisbane Girls Grammar School.

The Twelfth Night Players was an amateur group founded by Felgate. It was named "Twelfth Night" because it intended to perform of the twelfth night of every month. Felgate had directed many plays for the Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society. A society that was for advanced performers. Felgate believed that, with her teaching skills, she could found a new company for improving amateurs who would perform important plays. When it started performing, the company consisted of only a dozen or more amateur actors.

The Twelfth Night company first performed in March 1936 at the Empire Chambers. In the first three years of the company, it staged 21 different plays including works by the British playwrights J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne and J. B. Priestley.

Felgate travelled abroad in 1939 and in 1947. In the 1940s Twelfth Night Theatre performed many plays new to Australia which Felgate was able to source including John Van Druten's I Remember Mama, Shaw's 1939 play In Good King Charles's Golden Days, Krasna's 1944 play Dear Ruth and the eponymous Gas Light. In 1948 the company found its first location in a large building on Wickham Terrace where it occupied two floors; the upper for play rehearsal and the lower for teaching. In 1955, Felgate became a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In the following year the company obtained a church hall on Wickham Terrace named Gowrie Hall which became their small theatre. Felgate appeared in another showing of I Remember Mama before retiring from the company in 1962. She continued her association as its Patron while Joan Whalley took over as the artistic director of Twelfth Night Theatre.

Felgate died in 1990 in Auchenflower, Queensland.