[3] The family later moved to South Africa, where MacTavish's parents worked as missionaries: her father died there in 1957, and she returned to New Zealand with her mother and two siblings to live in Dunedin.

[7] In 2008, MacTavish and Ross Johnston revived a play they had performed in 1975 at the Fortune Theatre, Pinter's Old Times, directed by Lisa Warrington.

[9] In 2011, she played the "flamboyant medium" Madame Arcati, in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit at the Globe Theatre, Dunedin.

[10] In May 2013, MacTavish and Emerita Professor Jocelyn Harris presented Women Behaving Badly, a selection of readings from Jane Austen, at the Globe.

[12] In the 2019 New Year Honours, MacTavish was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to theatre and education.