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Marigold Charlesworth was born May 28, 1926 and was one of the many children evacuated to Montreal, Canada during World War II. She returned to England and enlisted in the Women's Royal Naval Service as a driver for Bletchley Park, where British code breakers worked in secret during the war. She continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and soon after became a member of Stratford-upon-Avon's Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, where she met her life-long partner, Jean Roberts. In the mid-1950s, in London, she worked in television, radio, and children's theatre.
Canada's draw was so great that in 1956, she and Roberts moved to Canada. First to Calgary where they were unsuccessful in starting their own theatre company, then later to Toronto where she began working with the Canadian Players. In 1959, Charlesworth and Roberts, along with William Whitehead, founded a new professional theatre company called Red Barn Theatre (after the renovated building they occupied) in Jackson Point, Ontario. They ran the highly successful Red Barn Theatre, which proved a stepping stone for a generation of professional Canadian actors and directors including such names as Jackie Burroughs, Barbara Hamilton, Martha Henry, Brian Doherty (who later founded the Shaw Festival), and Bill Glassco (who later founded Tarragon Theatre).
As an educator, she taught at the National Theatre School in the 1960s and from 1979-1980 at George Brown College in Toronto. She became the first woman to direct at the Shaw Festival in 1969 when she took on Part I of Shaw's Back to Methuselah and the first woman to be invited to direct at the Stratford Festival in 1977, when she directed Much Ado about Nothing. She also served as co-Artistic Director or directed productions for the National Arts Centre, Young People's Theatre Company, Crest Theatre, Hexagon Theatre, and many others. She appeared as an actor in CBC's first film production, Timothy Findley's The Paper People (1966).
She died September 11, 2015 in her retirement home in Bagnols en Forest in the south of France. She was pre-deceased by her partner, Jean Roberts.
Sources:
"Destroyed by Fire a Year Ago, Red Barn Theatre Officially Folds." The Waterloo Region Record, July 5, 2010. Accessed September 24, 2024. Available at https://www.therecord.com/entertainment/destroyed-by-fire-a-year-ago-red-barn-theatre-officially-folds/article_4be0e07a-4930-5bab-9104-82cd2b1a98df.html.
Shuster, Beth. "Lived Lived: Marigold Charlesworth, 89." [obituary] Globe and Mail, December 24, 2015. Accessed September 24, 2024. Available at https://www.legacy.com/ca/obituaries/theglobeandmail/name/marigold-charlesworth-obituary?id=41439342.