Painter and theatre director. Born in New Zealand, died in Spain on Tuesday, aged 55.
Tessa Schneideman brought "an original and exotic feel" to London theatre in the 1980s and 1990s, the Guardian said.
A painter by training, her approach was essentially visual, physical and musical. She may be remembered best for vivid interpretations of plays originally written in Spanish.
Born and brought up in New Zealand, Tessa Schneideman came to London in the early 1960s to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art.
After gaining an MA at the University of Iowa, she established herself as a painter, showing at the Whitechapel, the London Group and the Royal Academy.
In 1980, she turned to the theatre and formed a mime group, Three Women.
The group won an Arts Council bursary to study in Paris with Jacques le Coq. Tessa Schneideman returned to open the London International Mime Festival and the Barcelona Festival, and to tour Europe with a succession of shows.
Throughout the 1980s Tessa Schneideman directed five plays at the Oval House and in 1990 founded her own company, the Loose Change Theatre, whose first performance was Burning Patience, at the Soho Poly.
Michael Wright described it in the Times as "consistently inventive" and wrote of its "dangerous sensuality" and "scrambled frenzy."
In 1993, she produced Roosters, by Milcha Sanches-Scott, at the same theatre, and two years later went to Puerto Rico to direct Calderon's Life's a Dream.
Increasingly, Tessa Schneideman spent time in Bedar, a hill village in south-east Spain, returning to London to teach at the Mountview Theatre School.
Driving to their honeymoon this month, Tessa Schneideman, her husband and two relatives from Australia were killed when their car plunged off the road.
- NZPA
<i>Obituary:</i> Exotic, vivid drama her forte
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