Anya Tate-Manning

Anya Tate-Manning is a performer, scriptwriter, director and teacher based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and originally from Ōtepoti. Anya is a graduate of Otago University, Te Kura Toi Whakaari o Aotearoa, and has an MA in Scriptwriting from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. 

An award winning theatre maker, Anya has worked across genre and form in live performance, and toured extensively to festivals in Aotearoa, Australia and the UK. She is the co-founder of the longest running Political Satire show in Aotearoa; Public Service Announcements, which has now produced 19 original productions. Her solo work My Best Dead Friend toured for 5 years, and won numerous awards, including Outstanding Performance (Wellington Theatre Awards, 2018), The Summerhall Award (Melbourne Fringe Festival 2018) and Best in Fringe (NZ Fringe Festival, 2018). Anya also teaches in the Acting Department at Te Kura Toi Whakaari o Aotearoa, directs solo comedy shows, has written and directed her first short film (Blue Lake), and has several screen projects currently in development. 

Anya is passionate about comedy as a vehicle for building community, generating empathy and inviting catharsis. As well as creating her own performance works, she directs and mentors other artists in their own works. Across several years of teaching and facilitating solo making at Toi Whakaari, Anya has assisted in the birth of approx 150 solo shows.

Growing up in Te Waipounamu, Anya was given unique opportunities early in her career by local artists and companies, in particular WOW! Productions (Whaea Kairau & Blue Smoke) and the Fortune Theatre (Much Ado About Nothing). She is especially grateful to the teachers and mentors from these early days.

Other performance work includes Glastonbury Festival (Fiery Tongues), a solo cabaret about Admiral Ackbar (NZ Comedy festival), a cult hit marionette puppet show (Puppet Fiction), Silo Theatre Hudson and Halls Live! (Best Supporting Actress, Wellington Theatre Awards, 2016), and numerous shows with Barbarian Productions; Grand Opening, White Elephant and Another Mammal (Actor of the Year, Wellington Theatre Awards 2021).