Muriel Rose Romanes (born 18 March 1946) is a British former television actress and award-winning stage director. She is best known as a cast regular in the

Scottish Television Scottish Television (now, legally, known as STV Central Limited) is the ITV network franchisee for Central Scotland. The channel — the largest of the three ITV franchises in Scotland — has been in operation since 31 August 1957 and is the ...

drama ''

Take the High Road ''Take the High Road'' (renamed ''High Road'' from 1994 to 2003) was a Scottish soap opera produced by Scottish Television, which started in February 1980 as an ITV network daytime programme, and was broadcast until 2003. It was set in the ficti ...

''; and as the artistic director of the

Stellar Quines Theatre Company Established in 1993, Stellar Quines is a women's Scottish theatre company and charity based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Stellar Quines was under the artistic direction of Muriel Romanes from 1996-2016 when Jemima Levick took over. The company has ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

Career

Born in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, Romanes began her acting career as a student at the

Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland ( gd, Conservatoire Rìoghail na h-Alba), formerly the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama ( gd, Acadamaidh Rìoghail Ciùil is Dràma na h-Alba) is a conservatoire of dance, drama, music, production, and ...

. Having worked in Scottish theatre for many years, she played the part of schoolteacher Miss Welch in ''

Gregory's Girl ''Gregory's Girl'' is a 1980 Scottish coming-of-age romantic comedy film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn and Clare Grogan. The film is set in and around a state secondary school in the Abronhil ...

'' (1981). In 1980, she joined the cast of ''Take the High Road'' and, until 1989, played the part of Alice Taylor (née McEwan), one of the programme's longest-running characters. After leaving ''Take the High Road'', Romanes returned to theatre where she had many successes. She became an associate director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh where she directed several acclaimed productions, including ''The Deep Blue Sea'', ''A Listening Heaven'', ''Lavender Blue'', ''A Streetcar Named Desire'', ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'', and ''Anna Karenina''. In 1993, she was a founder member of the

in Edinburgh and, in 1996, became its first artistic director. Romanes held this post until she retired in 2015. Romanes was a frequent visiting lecturer and director at the Drama School of Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University where she directed a number of productions.

Honours

On 12 June 2016, following her retirement, the

Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland The Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) are an annual event awarding performances "substantially produced in Scotland, or developed, rehearsed and premiered in Scotland". Awards ceremony The ceremony is itinerant in terms of location, sw ...

(CATS) presented Romanes with the prestigious "CATS Whiskers" award for outstanding achievement "in supporting and strengthening women’s role in Scottish theatre", most notably as the first artistic director of Stellar Quines. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the

2016 Birthday Honours The 2016 Queen's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as pa ...

for services to drama.

References

Bibliography

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Romanes, Muriel 1946 births Living people British theatre people Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Cambridge Scottish soap opera actresses Scottish television actresses Scottish theatre directors Take the High Road