Killing Katie: Confessions Of A Book Club
Ensemble Artistic Director Mark Kilmurry invited Francesca Savige to direct Killing Katie when she finished her stint with the Sandra Bates Directors Award two years ago.
After several postponements due to COVID since 2019, the show will finally be staged in early 2022.
Killing Katie playwright Tracey Trinder was “an extraordinarily funny and brilliant woman with a history in screenwriting. This was her first play but it’s a cracker,” Savige says.
After Trinder’s death, the Ensemble initiated the Tracey Trinder Playwrighting Award for Comedy Writing.
Savige says it’s “brilliant” working with the cast of all women, and the show is “extremely funny and relatable.”
She loves the intimacy of smaller stages such as the Ensemble’s, both as director and audience member.
She says audiences will identify with some of the characters in Killing Katie, or know people like these characters. Many book clubs are coming to see the show and will “absolutely get the politics of a book club.”
Shakespeare has had a major influence on Savige, starting when she cried over a performance of Romeo And Juliet when she was 14 to when she played the huge role of Rosalind in As You Like It.
She won a Fellowship to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and still works for Sport For Jove, the award–winning NSW-based repertory theatre company. There she learnt stagecraft from Artistic Director Damien Ryan, which she has applied to her direction of Killing Katie.
The show should bring some welcome wit to audiences in the new year!
Jan 9-Feb 26. Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall St, Kirribilli. $38-$79+b.f. Tickets & Info: www.ensemble.com.au
