Leading NZ Actor Takes On Literary Icon

Tuesday 23rd May

Leading NZ Actor Takes On Literary Icon

Award winning actor DANIELLE CORMACK takes to the stage this August to play literary icon Katherine Mansfield in a one-woman play celebrating the life of New Zealand’s most famed writer.

“…Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices.
Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth…”
- Katherine Mansfield
Using Mansfield’s own words, taken from her letters, journals and stories, Cormack journey’s through the writer’s precocious template for living as an 18 year old to her premature death at 34. We share Mansfield’s frustration with the parochialism of early New Zealand, the anxiety and elation of her first years in London, the death of her brother and the frustrations of her marriage, the onset of tuberculosis, and above all, her passion for writing, which was to be the sustaining force of her life.

New Zealand actor and writer Catherine Downes collated the material for the script and first performed THE CASE OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD in Holland in 1978. Downes performed the show throughout the late seventies and until the early nineties to unanimous acclaim in England, Scotland, The Netherlands, America, Australia and New Zealand.

The play won the Festival Times Award and the Scotsman Omnibus Award at the 1979 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, was awarded Best Radio Play ABC Australia in 1981 and was nominated for a PYE Award for Best Radio Play BBC World Service.

Directed by award winning director KATIE WOLFE, whose production of The Women was seen by more than 13,000 people nationally in 2005, this version of Mansfield focuses on shifting mood and nuance, sudden anger, self-deprecating humour, an acute eye for irony and the ridiculous, the joy and fear of living, the pose and the twinkle - with no gap present between the performer and the audience. The intimacy offered will be irresistible.

“….a smashing argument … this is a treat not to be missed….”
- NZ Herald
“….a powerfully executed work of art….”
- NZ Listener
featuring DANIELLE CORMACK (pic attached)
theatre: The Vagina Monologues; Skin Tight; Caligula; The Blue Room
film: Topless Women Talk About Their Lives; The Price of Milk; River Queen
television: Rude Awakenings (2006); Maddigan’s Quest (2006); Shortland Street

directed by KATIE WOLFE
Chapman Tripp Theatre Award Winner for Director of the Year: The Women
Shortland Street

THE CASE OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD plays at The Herald Theatre
AUGUST 22 – SEPTEMBER 16 2006
Monday and Tuesday at 7pm
Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm
bookings from TICKETEK
09 307 5000 or www.ticketek.co.nz

ENDS