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Sheila Moriarty - Voice Teacher - my mother
The youngest of three daughters, Sheila Moriarty grew up in North London. Her mother was a professional singer and her father played the organ for the local church. His daughters all played musical instruments and Sheila and one of the older sisters sang.
She began her career as an actress cast in tragic roles. She
also gave
recitals of poetry and song and appeared on BBC radio programmes.
During the war she worked in an East End shelter, entertaining people who had
lost their homes, in the midst of the Blitz.
In between Sheila's first and second marriages she continued to do various jobs.
Following the death of her second husband she realised her true calling - teaching, centered on voice production.
She joined the staff of the Webber-Douglas Academy in the mid-Sixties, where she remained for 13 years. In the Eighties she worked with GRAEAE, a company of professional, disabled artists. She was a very active member of the Association of English Singers and Speakers, becoming president in 1985 for three years, and in addition to all this she gave private tuition to students, many of whom already were, or soon became, extremely successful.
She also worked in a freelance capacity for the Guildford School of Acting, conducting post-graduate classes with a particular focus on her specialist subject, Shakespeare.
She was a regular guest tutor at the Lee Strasberg School, an adjudicator at many drama festivals and was a key figure in the National Operatic and Dramatic Association. Sheila was director for several years, including the course this year [1994], just a few weeks before her death.
Sheila was a radical educationalist, encouraging others to think independently, to have the courage to take risks, as did she herself. She was a teacher in the broadest sense, of acting and singing, of natural voice production and of interpretation of text.
Sheila died of cancer, and a celebration in her memory was held at the Chanticleer Theatre on February 5th, 1995.
Obituary for Sheila Moriarty in The Stage (Feb 23rd 1995) written by Julia Howard (my sister, and Sheila's daughter)