WITH THE ABILITY to kindle a fire in a shy young person’s sense of self, a fire that would stay aflame through the vagaries of high school and all the way to a successful onstage career, Nicholas Wilcox was a deeply gifted teacher. A man with a brilliant mind and a beautiful heart, he tragically succumbed to depression on 29 December 2024. He was 39.

Endowed with a glorious vocal presence, Nicholas was a tenor who earned the moniker of ‘The Voice’ among his friends and collaborators. Taller than most and endowed with considerably more empathy than many, Nicholas is remembered as being an avid reader with a diverse and unusual taste in literature, he loved everything from Shakespeare to Frank Herbert’s Dune, with a passionate thoroughness.

He had a beautiful sense of moment — and humour — and was unafraid to burst into song to illustrate a point. A memorable rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, was a tool, in many friends’ memories to put an artistic difference of opinion to rest. Other friends remember him “channelling his inner Freddie Mercury” with a hearty rendition of rock band Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, one night at Makhanda’s famous pub, The Rat and Parrot, after the venue’s music had been switched off for the night.

A 2006 graduate in Drama from Rhodes University in Makhanda, Nicholas was one of a strong group of friends, who all developed voices in the notoriously difficult arts industry – from photography to performance, theatre design to writing. He was a forgiving friend, an introvert and a consummate clown who was able to understand the dark side of existence with a song in his heart and a hefty dollop of subversion on his lips.

Born on 13 May 1985, in the southern English coastal town of Poole to Linda and Bernie Wilcox, Nicholas was an only child. His parents were artisans – his mother was a hairdresser and his father was a joiner, prototype wireman and boat-builder who had served in the merchant navy. When Nicholas was a small boy, he and his parents emigrated to South Africa, settling in Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal; Nicholas was enrolled and educated at Felixton College in Zululand. After matriculating and graduating, he return to teach Drama at his alma mater between 2010 and 2015, moving on to teach Drama at King David High School in Linksfield, Johannesburg between 2015 and 2023.

His was a life coloured by travel and a diversity of experiences. A soloist and member of the Rhodes Chamber Choir and then the KwaZulu-Natal Youth Choir for several years, Nicholas had an elasticity in his skills and stretched his energies from performance to teaching, vocal artistry to mentoring. The energy and melting pot of Makhanda, which culminated each July in the National Arts Festival was such a pinnacle in Nicholas’s artistic understanding of the world with all its merits that he returned there often, through the different manifestations of himself through his career and life – as a performer, a chorister and a teacher, with a group of young curious minds, in tow.

For Nicholas and his students, an understanding of the beast called drama was not only about being able to give forth in front of an audience, it was also about the nuts and bolts of what makes a theatre into a mini-universe of its own. Students were shown the magic of the sound box and the surrealism of backstage, they were offered the kind of privileged insights into the mechanics of things, that could (and did) spark careers.

Former students remember working with him on emotionally difficult work of the ilk of Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. Their memories bring real laughter and spontaneous tears at Wilcox’s audacity and sense of balance, at how he taught humility in a context of wealth, and peace and contentment in a context where there was strife.

Nicholas has left this world having endowed so many of his students with a deep and irrevocable understanding of the serious value of play and having granted them the complex freedom to fail. He showed young people how to fill a space with their presence and to embrace the absurd and chaotic in a world that could be cerebral and cruel as it could be beautiful and rich.

Nicholas lost his father a decade ago, and his mother, two years ago. He is survived by his two aunts, Irene and Brenda, his late mother’s sisters; his six cousins: Garry, Kerry, Laura, Sally, Burnett and Nicola; his labrador, Atreides, who has been lovingly rehoused; hundreds of broken-hearted friends; and countless young people whose lives and dreams he touched seismically with his knowledge, passion and belief in their futures.

• A memorial service will be held to celebrate Wilcox’s life at Wits Theatre on Sunday 26 January 2025 at 11am.

• A fund has been established to financially assist the people who have adopted Atreides. If you would like to contribute, please make an EFT to: ZikkaZimba Productions;
First National Bank
Account Number: 62310745916
Branch Code: 250655; Reference: NW: (your name). Once you’ve made the payment, please email proof of payment to ryan.ditt@gmail.com. If you wish to contribute to perpetuating the memory of Nicholas Wilcox’s life in any other way, please contact Ryan Dittmann: 082 261 2560.