Actor - Miranda Harcourt
Miranda Harcourt is one of New Zealand's best-known actors, an acclaimed theatre director and an acting coach for some of the best in the business.
After graduating from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, Miranda gained national attention in the watershed television production Gloss (1987—89).
Committed to making her own work, Miranda has initiated a number of touring theatre shows, including Kaz — A Working Girl, Children of a Lesser God and Oracles and Miracles.
In 1990 Miranda was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship and spent a year at the Sesame Institute at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Miranda and husband Stuart McKenzie formed the Community Theatre Trust in 1993 to produce and tour theatre. Successful national and international tours include, Verbatim and Touch and Go (co-written with William Brandt), Portraits and Flowers from My Mother's Garden (commissioned by the 1998 NZ Festival of the Arts and published by Penguin Books).
Miranda and Stuart have a long history of working closely together in theatre and film as well as with their successful children’s books Miranda's Alphabet and Miranda's Numbers (www.mirandasalphabet.co.nz).
Miranda is also an acclaimed theatre director. Her 1999 production of Much Ado About Nothing for Downstage Theatre won Best Production at that year's Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. Her production The World's Wife was a sell out success at the 2002 NZ Festival of the Arts.
Head of Acting at Toi Whakaari for seven years, Miranda now works nationally and internationally as an acting coach for film and television. She was AnnaSophia Robb's acting coach in the box-office hit Bridge to Terabithia. Other recent projects include Jane Campion’s Bright Star; Jonathan King’s Under the Mountain; Gaylene Preston’s Home By Christmas; Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and the TV series Kaitangata Twitch directed by Yvonne McKay. Miranda has just returned from Hawaii where she again coached AnnaSophia Robb in Sean McNamara’s upcoming surf chick-flick Soul Surfer.
Miranda is the winner of many awards and accolades for her work. In 2002 she was awarded an ONZM for her work in theatre and the community.
Writer - Stuart McKenzie
Stuart is the 2000 Bruce Mason Award winner. He started his theatre career with the Free Theatre in Christchurch in the 80s. His keenly championed plays there include The Joffongract and The Rapist Over Suzannah. In 1996 Stuart’s play True opened at Bats Theatre in Wellington, later transferring to Downstage. A young wife reveals to her husband that she slept with David Bowie. It was reviewed in The Listener as “a small miracle of a play, continually challenging, teasing and provoking.” His play Double Beat opened at Downstage in 2000, directed by wife Miranda Harcourt and starring Tim Spite, Cliff Curtis, Hera Dunleavy and Sophia Hawthorne.
In 1998 Stuart wrote Flowers from My Mother's Garden, a sell-out success at the NZ International Festival of the Arts. Flowers explores genealogy, social history and family dynamics through the lens of Miranda’s relationship with her mother Kate Harcourt. Flowers toured nationally and was seen by over 35,000 people, becoming one of new Zealand’s most loved and popular plays. It is published by Penguin Books and was broadcast on National Radio on Christmas Day 2000.
Stuart is a partner in MAP Film Productions with Neil Pardington and Miranda Harcourt. His debut feature, psychological thriller For Good (with Miranda Harcourt, Michelle Langstone and Tim Balme) had its premiere at the 2003 Montreal Film Festival and was selected for competition in the Critics Choice section of the 2004 Paris Film Festival as well as being invited to many other festivals. Together with MAP partners and singly, Stuart has produced, written and directed several acclaimed short films, including The Mouth and the Truth (Best Short Film, 1991 New Zealand Film & TV Awards), Ends Meat (voted Best Film by the staff of the 1992 London Film Festival), Snap (Official Selection, 1995 Clermont-Ferrand), Chinese Whispers (finalist, 1996 Asia Pacific Film Festival) and Voiceover (Best Short Film, 1997 NZ Film & TV Awards).
In 2005, Stuart conceived and directed a 10-part observational documentary series called Tough Act for TV2, about students training at Toi Whakaari: the NZ Drama School.
Stuart has degrees in Creative Writing and Contemporary religion from Victoria University and Canterbury University and has completed post-graduate research in contemporary theology at Cambridge University with controversial British theologian Don Cupitt.
Stuart and Miranda live in Wellington and have three children — Peter, Thomasin and Davida. Stuart is also the father of actor Sara Allen.
Director - Tim Spite
Tim Spite has performed in over 70 shows since graduating from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School 18 years ago. He has won an unprecedented 14 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards, including Best Designer, Best Actor, Most Original Production and, most recently, Best Director in 2008 for Paua and the same award again in 2009 for Biography of My Skin.
Tim has co-written 13 plays, eight of which were created by his group SEEyD Theatre Company. Recent creations, The Remedy Syndrome and Turbine were both nominated for Best New NZ PLay. He co-wrote and directed Lullaby Jock for Centrepoint Theatre and directed the 2008 Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School production of Arcadia. In 2009 he performed in SEEyD’s production of Turbine at Downstage Theatre and The 39 Steps at Circa Theatre. His TV credits include The Hothouse, The Pretender and Until Proven Innocent.
Tim is about to open a new show at Wellington’s Downstage Theatre called The December Brother, produced by Stuart McKenzie.
