Nita Pannell was born in southwest Western Australia and married a country doctor William James (Jim) Pannell. She acted with an amateur group at Goomalling in the 1930s and studied speech with Lily Kavanagh in Perth. Pannell had a very successful career as a producer and actress. She acted at the Patch Theatre in 1944 and co-founded the Company of Four in 1950. Ron Banks writes: 'Theatrical performances took place in the pine-treed Somerville Auditorium, in the early years staged on a makeshift platform of planks placed across a foundation of 44-gallon drums. It was a popular spot on a summer evening...Most of the productions came from the creative energies of The Company of Four, the theatre group organised by the city's leading players Nita Pannell, Dorothy Krantz, Lily Kavanagh, and Sol Sainken.' (The West Australian, 25 January 2003).
Pannell directed the first play performed at the National Theatre Company, the Playhouse, Perth, The Teahouse of the August Moon by John Patrick, in 1956. The next year she played Mamma Bianchi in Richard Beynon's The Shifting Heart and performed in it throughout New South Wales, outback Queensland and Victoria. Pannell also acted as Dot Cook in the Sydney production of Alan Seymour's The One Day of the Year and again in London. In 1963 Patrick White adapted The Cheery Soul for her from his short story and she created the title role.
Pannell was instrumental in forming the first professional theatre company in Western Australia. In later years she played Estragon in an all female production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Eliza Shaw in Swan River Saga (1972) , a solo show which she co-authored with Mary Durack. After a premiere at the 1972 Festival of Perth it toured nationally in 1973. Pannell continued to act with the Hole-in-the-Wall Theatre Company into her eighties.
(Source: Adapted from Ivan King, 'Nita Pannell OBE', in the Currency Press Companion to Theatre in Australia ed. Phillip Parsons (1995): 424; Deryn Thorpe, 'Nita Pannell: theatre memories', Fremantle Arts Review 4.8 (August 1989): 10-11).
