Bio

Kate JasonSmith

Kate JasonSmith has spent most of her working life in theatre, film and television, as an actor, designer, director, writer and producer.

Early in her career Kate toured as an actor with Children’s Art Theatre andthen the New Zealand Players Drama Quartet. She trained in graphic design, then worked as a production designer for theatre and television in New Zealand, for BBC TV London, RTV Dublin, and on several films in Australia.

Kate’s passion for making feminist theatre created the inaugural feminist cabaret The Carefree Show for Unity Theatre in 1975, Muses for the 1977 NZ International Women’s Conference, and Company of Women for the Sydney Women’s Theatre Initiative 1982. Kate joined Gay Sweatshop Theatre in London in 1978 as a writer and actor, and later her play Charge was mounted at Action Space Theatre London.

In 1988 Kate was the originator and producer of the highly successful Hens’ Teeth Women’s Comedy Company that entertained New Zealand audiences for over 13 years. In 2020 she produced and emceed an offshoot - The Older the Better - at Circa Theatre, with a cast of over 70’s, and featuring 3 women performers in their 90’s.

As a director, Kate’s film Xmas for Lou received NZFTV Best Drama Award in 1993. She developed a method of teaching screen acting and taught at the NZ Drama School Toi Whakaari and at the Wellington Performing Arts Centre.

Kate is directing a feature documentary about Hens’ Teeth’s 1996 tour of the South Island. A Box of Birds due for release in 2022.

Currently Kate conspires in the Art of Perfumery as a co director in Pacific Perfumes, an Artisan Fragrance Company in Wellington’s iconic Aro Valley.

Her solo play I’ll Tell You This for Nothing – My Mother the War Hero premiered at BATS Theatre in Wellington September 2018. Kate has performed the play around NZ, at Edinburgh Fringe 2019, and at Adelaide Fringe 2020, where the Sunday Mail awarded her Best Female Solo Theatre Show. In October 2020 she was honoured with a command performance at Government House for Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy. I’ll Tell You This for Nothing will be touring small towns in New Zealand with Arts On Tour NZ in September 2021.

Jan Bolwell

Jan Bolwell was the director of I’ll Tell You This for Nothing - My Mother the War Hero, and very involved in finessing the final script. Jan is a playwright, performer, choreographer and director of Crows Feet Dance Collective. Welcome to the Death Cafe is Jan's 7th play. Bill Massey's Tourists, a solo play about her grandfather's experiences in WW1, was nominated for best performance at the 2015 Dunedin Fringe Festival. In 2017 it toured with Arts On Tour New Zealand. Bill Massey's Tourists is the third in a trilogy of solo plays Jan has written about her family. Standing on my Hands told the story of her father's WW2 experiences and Here's Hilda! was the dramatisation of her grandmother's life. Here's Hilda! was a nominee in Wellington's Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards.

In 2013 her play Dancing in the Wake, featuring Sacha Copland and John Smythe and herself, toured with AOTNZ. Double Portrait, her play about Frances Hodgkins, with actors John Wraight and Perry Piercy, also toured extensively throughout the country. Taking the High Ground, about mountaineers Freda du Faur and Lydia Bradey, premiered at Bats Theatre, Wellington in 2017. This year students at Otago University performed an excerpt from the play as part of the UNESCO Short Play Festival. Jan's latest adventure was performing in WOW 2019 with four other Crows Feet dancers.