Vale Joyce Barnes

Passed Away February 27, 2011

Life Member of the Red Cliffs Musical Society

In memory of Joyce Barnes, the following passage was from an interview that Glen Miller conducted with Joyce for his book “Record Crowds! Many Standing!” The history of the Red Cliffs Musical Society 1938 – 1998.

 I wasn’t there for Merrie England but they told me about it. That was done at Red Cliffs. I’m not sure if they didn’t do it in Diggerland. That was there for a long long long time. We did a lot of shows in Diggerland.

That’s where I started. The Desert Son. We started rehearsals in 1940 for it and Alma Queirpel was to have done Azuri and she did elocution with me from Miss – I can’t think of her name – Alma said to me: “How about joining up with the musical society?” I said “I can’t sing”. She said “You don’t have to sing. There’s parts in it and anyway you can sing in the chorus if you can hold a tune”. I said “Oh I can do that”, because I’d learned the piano when I was young. So I started going there with her.

But of course I didn’t know what was on the end of this. She was going with Bevan Clements and he was working at the Post Office. He shifted to Melbourne. Turned out she was trying to get a job down in Melbourne but didn’t know when it would be. So she got me to go out there and she said to Beacham “Can Joyce do an understudy?” We never had understudies. I didn’t take any notice. If she was away he’d give me the book to read the part and that sort of thing. Then all of a sudden she knew when she’d be going. And she said to Beacham “Can Joyce take over the part?” He said “We’ll see”. Anyway I copped the job. I had six weeks to learn the part and two solo dances. I’d never danced solos. And the ballet. So that was my start. And then we did Katinka and I was pregnant when we started and I used to get around with a bottle of Dexsal in one hand and a glass of water in the other. It was a Russian thing. Set in Russia. Then of course I told them T couldn’t go in The Quaker Girl. Because I had Elaine that year.

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