Maggie Forsyth obituary
My friend Maggie Forsyth, who has died aged 70 of cancer, spent more than two decades as a director and set designer with small theatre companies, including the Greenwich Studio company in south-east London, of which she was artistic director and which she owned and ran with her husband, Julian Forsyth, from 1993 until 2000.
Eager to introduce audiences to less well-known European works, Maggie and Julian staged a series of 11 continental plays at the Greenwich Studio theatre to full houses and glowing reviews over a period of seven years.
The scripts were mostly new translations by Julian, while Maggie took charge of the staging and much of the set design. In 1994 she won an outstanding achievement award from Time Out magazine for her work as artistic director on that year’s season of plays, which included the satirical Erasmus Montanus by Ludvig Holberg.
German by birth, Maggie also staged a run of successful German classics at the Young Vic Studio in London, which led to regular productions for London drama schools between 1990 and 2007.
Maggie was born in Nuremberg to William Graffam, an American pastor in the Lutheran church, and Susanne Lange, a parish worker from the Ruhr.
The eldest of seven children, she spent her childhood between the US and Germany and her formative teenage years in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where her father became a pastor to the German community.
At 18 she returned to Germany to study English and German literature at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, where she had her first experience of acting and directing and where she also met Julian, an aspiring actor. They married in 1978.
In 1980 Maggie worked for four years as a lektorin (a native speaker providing conversation with students) in the German department at Goldsmiths, University of London, where one of her tasks was to produce the department’s annual German-language play.
Once that role came to an end, she took on various part-time translation jobs until in 1986 her professional theatre career began when she set up her own Rude Mechanicals theatre company in the mid-80s before going on to the Greenwich Studio theatre and company, which she and Julian bought from its previous owners, a trio of actors.
Maggie’s theatre work was cut short in 2007 when she was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, requiring major surgery that left her with breathing problems and a reduced speaking voice. Thereafter she returned to self-employed translation work, applying herself to a wide range of material, from websites to books.
Always open and friendly, Maggie inspired affection, trust and loyalty. People readily looked to her for leadership and advice, and she was never lacking in ideas, or kindness. Her household was a reliable place to find good company and excellent food.
Before she died Maggie was finishing a children’s book, in verse, about the Ethiopian misadventures of a large pet tortoise.
Julian died of cancer a few weeks before her. She is survived by their son, Dettmer, and grandchildren, Lilly and Sam.
