Anne Clarke

Anne Clarke née Remans (born 1806), was a pioneering actor, singer and theatre manager in Tasmania, Australia, significant as the first woman to manage an Australian theatre, being director of the Theatre Royal, Hobart, in 1840–1847. Life Anne Remans and fellow-actor Dinah Rudelhoff were brought out to Tasmania from England in 1834 under a sponsorship scheme, and first appeared with J. P. Deane's company, which at the time was playing at the Argyle Rooms in Hobart. Deane was early criticised for unfairly monopolizing their services. This was just one year after the introduction of professional theatre in Tasmania by the travelling company of Samson and Cordelia Cameron from England, and only two years after the first professional performance in Australia, at Barnett Levey's Royal Hotel in Sydney in December 1832. making her one of the first professional actors active in Australia. In November 1834, by which time she had married Michael Clarke, she took part in Kotzebue's The Stranger with Deane's company, as Mrs Haller, a part previously taken in Hobart by Cordelia Cameron. Clarke performed with the Camerons' theatre company in 1834–36 and with that of their rival John Meredith in 1836–40. Manager In April 1840, she became the manager of Theatre Royal. Though Cordelia Cameron managed the theatre in Launceston in 1836 and was as such the first woman theatre director in Australia de facto, Cameron only did so as the proxy of her spouse during his absence, and Clarke was thereby the first woman to have formally been theatre director in Australia.