A woman ahead of her time

Every word in The Case of Katherine Mansfield, with Danielle Cormack as the writer, comes from Mansfield's pen

It is just as well Katie Wolfe is naturally drawn to plays which explore female experience. In 2004 and last year, Wolfe directed the 1930s satirical comedy The Women, and won the Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for Director of the Year. This year she tackled the post-World War II drama Plenty at the Silo Theatre.

Now she turns her focus to one of New Zealand's most celebrated and controversial writers, directing Danielle Cormack in The Case of Katherine Mansfield.

"It came about first and foremost because I wanted to find something for Danielle to do," she says. "I consider her to be the actor of her generation and I hadn't seen her on stage for a long time."

The Case of Katherine Mansfield was written by Wellington theatre stalwart Cathy Downes in the late 1970s and first performed at Theater De Kikker in Utrecht, Holland, in 1978. Paul Holmes voiced the part of John Middleton Murray, Mansfield's second husband.

Downes performed the play, based on Mansfield's letters, journals and short stories, all over the world.

It won the Festival Times Award and the Scotsman Omnibus Award at the 1979 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, received the Best Radio Play ABC Australia award in 1981, and was nominated for an award for Best Radio Play BBC World Service.

"Cathy directed me in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and we talked about The Case of Katherine Mansfield quite a lot," Wolfe recalls.

"At that time, I lived in a house with a huge kitchen and Cathy said, 'We don't need a lot of room - I'll put it on for you in your kitchen', but we never did get round to it."

Wolfe thought Cormack would be ideal for the play because of her versatility, dynamism and ability to take risks - much like the subject.

"Katherine Mansfield was a woman far ahead of her time who you have to admire for her bravery, independent spirit and determination to follow her own instincts and pursue her ambitions.

"She made up her mind she wanted to write and she wanted to go to London to do so. This was at a time when it was very difficult for women to pursue these types of goals. She followed her own instincts and went against the social mores of the day."

Born in Wellington in 1888, Mansfield spent most of her short life in Britain and Europe but her writing was shaped by early childhood experiences in New Zealand.

By the end of World War I, she was battling advanced tuberculosis but she struggled on, writing and searching for a cure, until her death in 1923. She was 34.

Mansfield left behind correspondence, journals and, of course, her stories. Every word in The Case of Katherine Mansfield comes from her own pen.

The play follows Mansfield's journey from a naive 18-year-old to her death 16 years later. It exposes her frustration with the parochialism of early New Zealand, the anxiety and thrill of her first few years in London, the death of her brother, her thoughts about marriage, and the onset of tuberculosis.

"Because she [Mansfield] left so much behind, we have a much clearer insight into her and all the things she was grappling with," says Wolfe. "We see an artist in development thinking, 'How can I express what I'm thinking?' and we look at the miniature of life and the small things, the private space that happens between people."

Cormack, in turn, says she chose to learn more about Mansfield through her writing rather than biographical works. "To know more about her means I am therefore becoming an observer of her; I want to be as close as I can be to being Katherine Mansfield."

For Wolfe, the challenge of directing the production is for the audience to be so captivated by Cormack's performance they feel as if they have spent an evening with Katherine Mansfield rather than watching a play.

"I saw a show at the Edinburgh Festival one year about Richard Burton and it was so convincing it felt as if Richard Burton was in the room. That's what I want this to feel like - that Katherine Mansfield has shared some of her experiences with the audience."

What: The Case of Katherine Mansfield
Where and when: Herald Theatre until Sep 16