The Magic of Her Body

We are now running a waitlist, if you missed out on a ticket and would like to go on the waitlist in case of any cancellations, please contact us.

She enthrals me, enslaves me – and her personal self – her body absolute – is my worship.

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Katherine Mansfield House & Garden, and Vixen Temple present The Magic of Her Body: Readings of Katherine Mansfield’s Queer Writing, an immersive theatrical experience in one of Aotearoa’s leading historic house museums as part of the 2025 Wellington Pride Festival.

Join performance artist Vixen Temple and historian Kerryn Pollock of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga on a journey through Mansfield’s sensual diary entries and sapphic-coded short stories, moving through the rooms in the home of her birth, Katherine Mansfield House & Garden in Thorndon. Live musical accompaniment will be performed by Ms Weeds (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday performances) and Isadora Gallagher (Saturday performances).

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is one of Aotearoa’s most internationally acclaimed writers. Born in Wellington, she lived permanently in England and Europe from 1908 until her untimely death from tuberculosis in 1923. She became a central figure in literary modernism alongside contemporaries such as Virginia Woolf and DH Lawrence. In the words of biographer Gill Boddy, ‘She sought to capture the transitory vividness of life and to bring ordinary moments and people into focus so that their full significance could be understood’. Her passionate diary entries, beginning when she was a teenager, reveal a sapphic sensibility and identity that carried over into her fiction. Mansfield is a messy, relatable teen, a literary diva, and queer icon whose voice speaks to us beyond time.

Audience members are welcome to bring a picnic to enjoy on the lawn before the show begins.

Please note: Katherine Mansfield House & Garden is a modestly-sized historic house. This event will take place throughout the house and most audience members will need to stand for the duration of the show. If you have physical accessibility requirements, please contact us to discuss how we can facilitate your attendance. Unfortunately, the house is not wheelchair accessible and we do not have an accessible bathroom.

The image shows a colourised version of a photo of teenage Katherine (from the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library: 1/2-162827-F) with her two lovers, Edie Bendall (left, from a Wellington Technical College class photo) and Maata Mahupuku (Ngāti Kahungunu, ATL: 1/2-049811-F).