Family Background — Giles 'Denmark' Mitchell

Family

Acting and Drama and Theatre is in my blood. My mother and father during World War 2 were actors (pacifists and conscientious objectors) in a travelling theatre in the UK called "The Pilgrim Players of Canterbury" under the directorship of E. Martin Browne and wife Henzie Raeburn — performing in underground shelters, prisons, military bases, churches and schools, with plays by T.S. Eliot and others.

My mother was in the first performance of "Murder in the Cathedral" (she was at that point a student at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) by T.S. Eliot in Canterbury Cathedral — my father had T.S. Eliot as a visiting teacher at his school. In 1936 it opened in London at the Mercury Theatre to great reviews from The Times. She performed Murder in the Cathedral at the Ritz Theater in New York on 16 February 1938.

The Meetings and Signing the Minutes photo includes: Elna Graham (who later married Brian Carey), Brian Carey (actor), Norman Tyrell, Denis Carey, Sylvia Read, E. Martin Browne, Ronald Long, Eric Mitchell (my father — who later became a doctor and microbiologist, Director of the Public Laboratory Service in Nottingham, and later Director of Public Health for the City of London), Nina Evans (my mother — when speaking to Peter Billingham in 1987 in his book Theatres of Conscience, 1939–53, she recalled: "The most enduring quality and aspect of that time was the sense of community that we shared … I have never experienced anything quite like it since, neither do I expect to"), and Henzie Raeburn.

Family

The Pilgrim Players of Canterbury

The Pilgrim Story

The Family

Nina Evans

Eric Mitchell

Kay Nelson & Giles