Kate Prior – 2004

Kate hailed from Wellington, where she attended Chilton St James. Following being in SGCNZ’s NSSP 1999, from which she was selected to be a member of SGCNZ YSC 2000, Kate did an Internship in Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe, London.

Kate graduated from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in 2004 and studied theatre and film at Victoria University of Wellington.

Since then she has worked as an actor, producer, writer and deviser in theatre and film. Most recently Kate wrote and produced NZFC-funded short film Eleven with collaborator and director Abigail Greenwood under their company, Flyleaf Films (www.flyleaffilms.co.nz). The short has screened in competition at various international festivals including the Berlinale, NZ International Film Festival, and Melbourne International Film Festival and was awarded Best Short Film Script and Best Short Film at the NZ Film Awards 2014. Kate has scripted a second short film for Flyleaf Films, Theodora, to be produced in 2015.

Kate’s work as an actor includes A Clockwork Orange and Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris for Silo Theatre, Doubt for Auckland Theatre Company, and Five Women Wearing the Same Dress for the Fortune and the Court Theatres. Most recent theatre work includes David Greig’s Midsummer at Circa Theatre (for which she was nominated Actress of the Year in the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards 2013), Dean Parker’s Tigers of  Wrath at Circa, and a New Zealand-wide tour of Lynda Chanwai-Earle’s Heat, a play set entirely in an Antarctic hut and powered off the grid by a wind turbine. In 2010, Kate performed in and produced the NZ tour of the solo work My Name is Rachel Corrie. Television credits include Nothing Trivial and Go Girls. Kate also works as a voiceover artist for various TVCs and documentaries.

Most recently working on contract as an Arts Adviser, Theatre at Creative New Zealand, Kate will be taking up a place on the new Masters in Dramaturgy at the Victorian College of Arts, Melbourne in 2015.