Catherine Patricia Downes MNZM (born 1951) is a New Zealand theatre director, actor, dramaturg and playwright.
[1][2] Downes wrote a one-woman play The Case of Katherine Mansfield, which she has performed more than 1000 times in six countries over twenty years.
Downes completed a BA in English, Politics and Drama at Victoria University, and worked as a programme purchaser and film editor for TVNZ.
[4] Downes spent three years acting professionally in New Zealand before travelling to Europe in 1976, where she established theatre companies in Amsterdam and London.
...The audience relishes in particular her confidently explosive entrance in her underwear, battling with control freak Christopher over the kimono he insists she wear to meet the new girlfriend.
[10] More recently, Downes played Alison in Radio New Zealand's COVID19 Lockdown Festival 2020 version of Roger Hall's Four Flat Whites in Italy.
[15] In 2007 Downes directed the musical Urinetown at Downstage, and in 2008 Donna Banicevich Gera's Land Without Sundays at Maidment Theatre in Auckland.
[1] The Suffrage Centennial Trust funded Downes to adapt Rachel McAlpine's novel about Kate Sheppard, Farewell Speech, into a play.