B i o g r a p h y
She a 37 year old South African singer, actress, researcher and lecturer based in Potchefstroom in South Africa. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Commercial Music at the School of Music at North West University and is known to her students as Dr Michelle Pretorius.
As a performer she has performed in a variety of choirs, which travelled to Israel, Vienna, Prague and Athens for various choir festivals. After completing her BMus degree specialising in opera, she did her Master's in Music in Performance (Classical Voice) and Dissertation at the University of Cape Town, South African College of Music. Her intention was to pursue a career as a mezzo-soprano in the Operatic world, however found a love for musical theatre whilst studying under Hannah van Niekerk. Whilst in Cape Town she performed in concerts as well as operatic productions, such as Rossini's Il Viaggio A Reims as Modestina at the Baxter Theatre in 2010. In 2011 she made a change and pursued a career in light classical music and musical theatre, by performing in various concerts, such as the musical extravaganza Razzle Dazzle, produced by Door 6 Entertainment, at the Masque Theatre in Cape Town in 2011.
In 2013, after completing her MMus degree for which she received a distinction in the Dissertation, she began her MA Musical Theatre course at the Guildford School of Acting. As part of this course she was involved in devising a completely original Musical called Mrs. Reggie Kray, which took the stage at the Waterloo East theatre in London during the first week of November in 2014.
Under the direction of Luke Sheppard, she played the role of a feminist Greek Goddess named Hetaira in the European premier of the smash hit Broadway musical Lysistrata Jones in Guildford.
After a season of performing in Sister Act the musical at Joburg Theatre under the direction of Janice Honeyman in 2015, she took the stage as Urusla the Sea Witch in the production of The Little Mermaid at the People's Theatre in Johannesburg in 2015 for which she received a nomination for a Naledi Award for best actress in a children's musical. 2016 was kicked off with the Afrikaans Pantomime, Sneeuwitjie, at the Marcealous Theatre at Emporers Palace in Johannesburg. After relocating to the United Kingdom Shelly took part in the development of a new musical, The Crocodile of Old Kang Pow, with Bunker Theatre Productions in London, in the workshop as the of role of Momolow in 2017. In 2021 Shelly performed in South African Stories Through Song at the Ludlow Fringe Festival. As a director, Shelly directed Carrie the Musical, Ruthless the Musical and her own song cycle UnSeen at the Walker Theatre in Shrewsbury between the years of 2022 and 2024. She also directed and performed in Fred the Musical, a new work, at the Liverpool Theatre festival in 2023. Furthermore, Shelly performed in her own musical song cycle, UnSeen (for which she is lyricist and book writer), at the Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton for the LEAP Festival.
As an academic Michelle holds a BMus degree in Opera Performance from the University of Pretoria, an MMus from the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town, a MA Musical Theatre from the Guildford School of Acting, University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, as well as a PhD in Musicology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She is a passionate researcher and lecturer within the studies of theatre, audience , celebrity and fandom. In 2024 Michelle also did a TEDx talk at the University of Chester in the United Kingdom.
