page_title: May Hollinworth
section_title: Freelance directing and acting in radio drama
hierarchical_section_title: May Hollinworth / Career / Freelance directing and acting in radio drama
caption_attribution_description: English: May Hollinworth (1895-1968): Australian actress, theatre director and founder of the Metropolitan Players
context_page_description: May Hollinworth was an Australian theatre producer and director, former radio actress, and founder of the Metropolitan Theatre in Sydney. The daughter of a theatrical producer, she was introduced to the theatre at a young age. She graduated with a science degree, and worked in the chemistry department of the University of Sydney, before being appointed as director of the Sydney University Dramatic Society. She held that post from 1929 to 1943, when she resigned and founded the Metropolitan Theatre, which she directed from 1944 to 1950. She presented a range of dramatic works, including Shakespeare and other classics, and contemporary plays from Australia and around the world. She premiered several Australian plays. She retired from the Metropolitan Theatre in 1950 due to illness, but was later invited to direct plays at the Independent Theatre and the Elizabethan Theatre in Sydney. She had a reputation as a superb producer, known for her highly effective use of lighting, and her abilities to arrange actors on stage to convey dramatic meaning visually, to overcome the challenges of large and small stages with minimal facilities, and to select and nurture a cast.
context_section_description: During the years in which Hollinworth worked for the Sydney University Dramatic Society, she also directed some other plays on a freelance basis. Among these were Day Must Break, a first play by Scottish-Australian playwright Alexander Connell, presented in 1937 by the J. C. Williamson company at the Theatre Royal. The Sydney Mail announced that Hollinworth would be "the first Australian woman to produce a professional play" at that theatre. A reviewer commented that, while the subject of the play was profound, the plot was flimsy and some of the acting melodramatic; however, Hollinworth "had provided an attractively simple setting".
  She formed the Leonardo Theatre Group in 1935, and with them she directed productions of Lucrece (1935) and Beggar on Horseback by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly (1935). A Sydney Morning Herald reviewer expressed surprise "that [Beggar on Horseback] reached as high a standard as it did", continuing "Miss May Hollinworth has already given evidence of resourcefulness and imagination as producer for amateurs".
  She was the producer of The Thirty-Eight Theatre, an amateur group which formed in 1938, which gave play-readings as well as two stage productions, Dodie Smith's Bonnet Over the Windmill in May 1939, and Rosamond Lehmann's No More Music in August 1939. A review of Bonnet Over the Windmill commented, "Much of the credit for the success of the presentation must go to the producer, May Hollinworth, who, in several recent productions, has proved her ability to handle casts with skill and judgment."
  Hollinworth worked with the Impressionist Theatre company, as director or as stage manager, for a number of productions, including Cyrano de Bergerac  and Death Takes a Holiday. She also directed pageants for mission societies, Christmas plays and performances by school associations, and, in 1930 and 1934, fundraising performances for what was then called the Sydney Industrial Blind Institution, including a production of Marguerite Dale's play Meet as Lovers.
  The Australian Women's Weekly described Hollinworth in 1937 as "among the many well known personalities on the air". From the late 1920s, she had acted in radio dramas broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Commission's station 2FC. Productions included The Tomb of Osiris by John Pickard in 1929,  and The Man Who Stayed at Home by J. E. Harold Terry and Lechmere Worrall in 1931.
caption: May Hollinworth directing the Metropolitan Players at a rehearsal of Ned Kelly by Douglas Stewart, 1947
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)"}