Donald Black (author)

Donald Black (author and composer as Donald Derek Black)

Donald Black was born in Cape Town in 1934. In 1941 he began piano lessons with concert-pianist Joyce Kadish and in 1943 he began speech and drama lessons with Gwen Rowland and appeared in her play "My Sainted Aunt". He studied at Wynberg Boys' High School (1944-1950) including Music (piano) as a subject and attended University of Cape Town in 1951 but dropped out after 3 months due to psychological problems. Instead he studied speech and drama at the Maas-Phillips Studio and attained the Associate and Licentiate diplomas in speech and drama of Trinity College, London, extra-murally. He studied ballet for six months and began training with weights at Issy Bloomberg's Gym where he started to learn to wrestle under Andy Dell. He worked as secretary of the Speech and Drama Department of the University of Cape Town and front-of-house manager of its Little Theatre (1955-1960) where he appeared in productions and also in productions for Children's Theatre and at the Labia and Hofmeyr Theatres. He composed music for Little Theatre and Children's Theatre productions and photographed professional wrestling for Die Volksblad. In 1960 he moved to London to study at the London School of Film Technique. He attended group psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic from 1968 to 1973. He completed a short film comedy (15 mins) One Man and his Dog which was one of MovieMaker's Ten Best Amateur Films of 1973. With an orchestral score specially composed by Pamela Liebeck it also won the prize for the best use of sound, The Best Comedy in the Canadian Amateur Film Festival and a silver medal at the Cannes Amateur Film Festival. He attended John Harris's Symbic Wrestling Club in Dulwich where he learnt professional wrestling and became a second for professional wrestlers for Devereux Promotions in Guildford, Camberley, Farnham, Horsham, and Farnborough and wrestled professionally for Sam McKeown's fairground booth. He founded the first club in Britain to teach gay men to wrestle teaching chiefly submission style from 1976 to 1980. He had also trained in freestyle with Jim Watson at his Oval Wrestling Club from 1979 to 1980 when he had to give up wrestling and weight training due to health reasons.Andrenapier (talk) 14:16, 5 October 2008 (UTC) He wrote "Wrestling for Gay Guys" published in 1995 and "Escape the Gay Straitjacket" published in 2002. His comedy "Making It Big!" was premiered at the Landor Theatre in London in February 2004.Andrenapier (talk)He completed a concerto for piano and orchestra "The Café Concerto" in 2006 see www.newmusiccomposition.com/donaldblack and www.donaldderekblack.com

External links

* [http://www.wrestlingforgayguys.com/index.html Wrestling for Gay Guys]
* [http://www.gaystraitjacket.com/ Escape the Gay Straitjacket]
* [http://www.newmusiccomposition.com/donaldblack The Café Concerto]
* [http://www.donaldderekblack.com/ The Café Concerto]

[Category:British composers|Black, Donald Derek]