{"id":134,"date":"2019-05-27T18:25:05","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T16:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theatreinenglish.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/?p=134"},"modified":"2024-02-17T16:10:45","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T15:10:45","slug":"in-memorium-alan-leather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/2019\/05\/27\/in-memorium-alan-leather\/","title":{"rendered":"In Memoriam – Alan Leather"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alan Leather — long-time GEDS member, actor, director and friend to all \u2013 sadly passed away on March 3, 2019 after fighting a long illness. \u00a0He leaves behind a son and daughter, Jack and Amy, and 3 cherished granddaughters \u2013 Cecilia, Miriam, and Tess. \u00a0Alan\u2019s beloved wife, Sue, passed away in 2015. Losing both so soon upon one another was a difficult blow for all.<\/p>\n

Alan\u2019s passions included politics, humanitarianism, world travel, trade unionism, and the arts \u2013 particularly theatre. \u00a0Alan was born 21 September 1941. Starting from a working-class background, he started a 6 year apprenticeship at the age of 16 as a compositor at Odhams Press, Covent Gardens, London. \u00a0Eight years later he became head \u00a0of the printing department at St. Martin\u2019s School of Art, London.<\/p>\n

Alan was a true internationalist and humanitarian. His world travels began \u00a0in 1963 when he was an overseas volunteer in Zambia, working as organizing secretary for the Lusaka \u00a0YMCA. He later worked for OXFAM in India and Western Asia from<\/p>\n

1967-1971. \u00a0Alan became involved in trade union work when he served an assistant organizer for OXFAM\u2019s Co-operatives and Trade Unions Department in 1966. In 1971, he completed a diploma course in Development Studies at Ruskin College, Oxford, and two years later he completed an M.Phil in Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. In 1975, he was Lecturer of Development Studies at Ruskin College.<\/p>\n

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He eventually served almost 30 years as the Director of the Trade Union International Research and Education Group, and Assistant General Secretary of Public \u00a0Services International.<\/p>\n

Throughout his life, Alan had a deep love of music and theatre, and participated whenever he had the chance. He joined GEDS in 1986. A gifted actor, he appeared numerous times on the GEDS stage, his last performance being Friar Francis in Much Ado About Nothing in 2017. In addition, he directed many staged readings \u2013 often in partnership with his wife, Sue.<\/p>\n

In addition to his work with GEDS, Alan was a founding member of Theatre Someone, a smaller theatre group located in Divonne, France. With Theatre Someone, Alan performed in Someone Who\u2019ll Watch over Me (Frank McGuinness), Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) and The Devil and Billy<\/p>\n

Markham (Shel Silverstein). He performed the latter play at the Edinburgh Fringe Theatre Festival in 2016.<\/p>\n

Anyone who \u00a0knew or worked with Alan knew what a special man \u00a0he was. \u00a0Talented, intelligent, warm- hearted and funny \u2013 he was a good friend to all who \u00a0knew him. \u00a0And we are all a little richer for having known and worked with him. \u00a0One thing we can count on: He and Sue are reunited and joyfully putting together some theatre project wherever they are. – Gary Bird<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Alan Leather — long-time GEDS member, actor, director and friend to all \u2013 sadly passed away on March 3, 2019 after fighting a long illness. \u00a0He leaves behind a son and daughter, Jack and Amy, Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-memoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2905,"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/2905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geds.ch\/GEDSBLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}