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At The Bay

In July 2023 Troupe members, under the direction of Anne Manchester, helped create a short film. Click here to see this film Publicity 2023 Katherine Mansfield’s greatest story, At the Bay, is celebrated in a short photographic tribute, combining historical images and selected episodes from the story. The film is a new production by local photographer Simon Hoyle and includes actors from Eastbourne’s Butterfly Creek Theatre Group. Directed and narrated by Anne Manchester, it also draws on many contemporary images of the setting for At the Bay, chosen by local historian Alison Carew. The production is accompanied by music for cello and piano composed by

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Muritai School Yard Muritai Road, Eastbourne, Lower Hutt

Bard in the Yard 2022 was A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Anne Manchester. Watch on YouTube Watch a recording of this production on YouTube Publicity 2022 A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare c. 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict among four Athenian lovers. Another follows a group of six amateur actors rehearsing the play which they are to perform before the wedding. Both groups find themselves in a forest inhabited by fairies who manipulate the humans and

SNAP

In September 2020, while the rest of the world suffered through the COVID pandemic, New Zealand for a time was normal and Anne Manchester directed SNAP - a classic whodunit based on the novel “Photo Finish” by Ngaio Marsh – the New Zealand Queen of the genre. An extremely temperamental Callas-style operatic diva, Isabella Sommita, has been hounded around the world by an odious member of the paparazzi. Her manager takes her to a grand but remote lodge on a South Island lake and invites the London-based portrait painter Troy Alleyn (and her detective husband, Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard) to paint her portrait. We