The Magic of Her Body

"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.

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. If you have physical accessibility requirements, please get in touch to discuss how we can facilitate your visit. Unfortunately, the house is not wheelchair accessible and we do not have an accessible bathroom.