Earlier today, Thomas Spear (Île en île) informed his readers about the passing of Jacqueline Scott-Lemoine (1923-2011). The Haitian-born actress died on Saturday night in Dakar, Senegal at age 89.

Jacqueline Scott-Lemoine was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1923. Since 1966, she lived for many years in Dakar with her husband, the late poet Lucien Lemoine. An exceptional actress, Scott-Lemoine first played the role of the Queen in Aimé Césaire’s La Tragédie du Roi Christophe and later continued her career at the Théâtre National Daniel Sorano in Dakar.

As a young women in Haiti, after completing degrees in stenography and in and early childcare, Scott-Lemoine pursued acting at the Center for Dramatic Arts [Centre d’Art Dramatique] of the Institut Français d’Haïti and the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts [Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique] in Port-au-Prince. From 1950 to 1953, she worked at the Haitian Embassy in Paris before settling in Haiti in 1956, after a short stay in New York. She then moved to Paris with a scholarship to intern at the Maison de la Radio in France, where she completed a certificate of internship at the ORTF [Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française/French television broadcasting agency]. In Paris, she met leading cultural figures such as Louis Aragon and Jean-Marie Serreau, who offered her the role of the Queen in Césaire’ initiating her life in the theater, in which she played over fifty roles in plays such as Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée (adapted for the theater by Hervé Denis), William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” and Djibril Tamsir Niane’s Sikasso ou la dernière citadelle.”

Scott-Lemoine has also written various pieces for magazines and newspapers in Senegal and overseas, including the play La ligne de crête. Les Nuits de Tulussia gathers memories from the author’s childhood in Haiti and early days in Senegal.

For full article (in French), see http://www.aps.sn/aps.php?page=articles&id_article=82231

For complete biography (in French) and photo, see Île en île at http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/scott.html

For brief biography (in English), see http://aflit.arts.uwa.edu.au/ScottLemoineEng.html