Eulogy by Richard Jones, read by Michelle Wade on Tuesday 25 August 2009

I am going to talk about Linda's life - and the effect of Linda's life on us.

Though Linda's mother Gladys - who died in June of this year - was from Merthyr Tydvyl in Wales, and her father, Doug, was originally from Norfolk, her parents were very much Londoners. At a very young age Linda expressed a wish for dance lessons and was sent to Pat Britton's School of Dancing in Covent Garden where she excelled in the end of term shows. Her infant school was St Clement Danes in Drury Lane. Her junior school was St George's in Mayfair, and from the age of eleven she attended the Arts Educational School. Linda's childhood was spent in Soho, and, while she didn't take her father's passion for jazz into adulthood, it's clear that the relaxed bohemianism of her father's jazz record shop in the Charing Cross Road - which was regularly visited by every major jazz artist of the twentieth century - influenced the sensibilities of his daughter. Her professional life began at eighteen. She never wanted to do anything other than make theatre. She never doubted that she was an artist.

Here's the briefest summary of Linda's working life that I can make. She acted on British television and radio. She appeared in British and American feature films. She played for 2 years in the Rocky Horror Show at the King's Road Theatre. In London, she acted regularly at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. She also acted at the Royal Court Theatre, the National Theatre, the Young Vic, the Gate in Notting Hill, in the West End of London, at the King's Head Theatre in Islington, at the ICA, and for Second Stride Dance Company. Regionally, she acted frequently in Lancaster, Nottingham and Sheffield, and often in Coventry, Glasgow, and York.

Her choreography and directing was seen at Sadlers Wells, Glyndebourne, Milan, New York, Brussels, at both London opera houses, Berlin, Cardiff, Chicago, San Francisco, Oslo, Helsinki, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Leeds, in Stratford upon Avon, in Regent's Park, in Nottingham and in Lancaster. In 1989 she was Associate Director and choreographer at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. From 1994 she started what was to be a strong association with London's Bubble Theatre, where in addition to regularly performing indoor and outside promenade shows, she led workshops for actors, young people and people with learning difficulties. Her association with the Cardboard Citizen's Theatre Company began in the late nineties. Linda was working on the recent Cardboard Citizen's production of 'Mincemeat' up until a week before it's opening - when, entirely untypically, she had to withdraw because she was too fragile to continue.

Many of us here today wouldn't have had the careers we have had, or wouldn't have taken the risks in performing, designing, writing, directing or planning, had it not been for Linda. At work she was a great and easy collaborator. She was never precious, but nonetheless completely determined to see what she had imagined. She was always supportive and encouraging - but she couldn't and wouldn't suffer fools. She demanded application of all the skills one possessed - whether you were a seven-year old in a community project or an international opera singer you were treated identically - and if you didn't give everything you had to the project you were affectionately upbraided.

Her process was entirely ingenious and original. Choreographing young teenagers she would pretend she couldn't remember how some movement went - and thus they became the leaders of their rehearsal. She supported her regular collaborators, directors, writers, designers, composers, performers, and musicians, absolutely militantly - wanting only the best results for their work. She was hugely generous with her time, talent and energy. Her results, as you all know, were quirky, witty, playful and always honest. No one here could imagine her coming into a rehearsal room not caring about a project - or not having assiduously prepared.

Linda's acting was centred, unfussy, real, researched and detailed. She was a very brilliant performer and, as with many original artists, she moved onstage in a way you could never have imagined, but which was entirely true to the role she was playing. No one could move or make movements like Linda . She bridled at vanity in performing and talked about her own work dismissively and often with a mock grandeur. When the unexpected happened - which she always embraced - she would laugh with an audience at the ridiculousness of the situation before taking them back into the narrative - as though we had all surfaced for a gulp of air before diving in again. She watched other people's movements intensely and stored ideas about their movements that she liked. Choreography and acting which was disciplined, distilled, and bristling with intention and intelligence were the result of her acute and deep observations about behaviour.

The kind of skill Linda brought to her work, however, held no interest for her unless it made a political point. She was habitually subversive. She trusted subversion - or as she called it, naughtiness - because she believed it to be in some way dynamic or creative. Linda, at one point, developed a particular disinclination to tired commercial, feel-goodery in the theatre, and when Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opened in the West End she went around London with a black marker pen, crossed out the 'C' in 'Chitty' and replaced it with an 'S'. Think about it. She shouted very loudly on marches. She thought royalty was ludicrous - but once when out of loyalty to the company, she stood in a line to meet Prince Charles she used the opportunity to hijack his Royal Highness' attention and tell him that he ought to fund Cardboard Citizens. A few weeks later a cheque arrived for the company in the post.

She was scornful of politicians wanting large subsided theatre companies to be seen as 'houses of excellence'. She believed 'house of excellence' culture promoted the patronising, the generic, and the anodyne in theatre. She enjoyed declaring that she was a fossil from seventies agitprop theatre. She always had an eye out for injustice and she despised meanness, cruelty, and greed. She was entirely intolerant of the boring, conventional, and corporate because it held absolutely no resonance for her. She was powerful and edgy because she couldn't be bought.

Throughout her life Linda was drawn to magic and ritual. She knew about Wiccan magic and discreetly practised it. She embraced the mystery. It was a way of worshipping nature, which she loved. In the seventies she danced naked at Devil's Dyke. In the eighties she participated in and loved rave culture. She believed drugs, used responsibly and judiciously, were good educators.

Linda was a very beautiful woman. She dressed practically, but also with a very strong sense of irony. No one looked like her. She hung her clothes in colour order. She liked to survey them rather than shut them away. If the Doc Martens boots were to be teamed with the antique beaded skirt, the socks had to be exactly the right colour, and the various vests and T-shirts the best quality cashmere. The headwear thought best for the weather was always packed in the ubiquitous rucksack.

Linda loved catchphrases. If she approved of something she'd say "bargain". If she was handed something she'd say "Thank you, nurse". If people became fizzy or loud in a rehearsal she'd boom "Steady". She was a rock chick who loved a get out as a work out. She loved a cup of tea and a little ciggie. She loved working the bar here at Area 10 on nights when artists showed their work and, when she was younger, she really adored working as a cloakroom girl in clubs and staying up all night.

When she was happily in love she was euphoric. She learned great things from her love affairs and forged a way to find friendships with ex-boyfriends. Unrequited love would cause her pain but she was happier to feel it than repress it. She was quick to remind us that we were lucky to feel - that there were some who refused to feel - and that she felt sorry for people who couldn't feel.

She forever had her eye on her friends' lives and spoke to us with compassion and with mirth. If she was hurt by you she was open enough to let you know her hurt and was quick to forgive. Somehow she would tell us, with or without words,each time she saw us that she thought we were beautiful. That you could stand before her and that she understood your tone felt like a privilege and it also felt very safe. She was talented at intimacy. To be loved by her felt absolutely and completely grand. She used humour to help us move and develop. She used laughter to give us good health. She was entirely unpompous. She was like her name: Linda Dobell. Linda - which is Spanish for 'most beautiful' and "belle" which is French for 'beautiful'. She was the most beautiful of the beautiful.