At the Bay to be shown at the Bay

by Ann Packer

The world premiere of an audiovisual production featuring Katherine Mansfield’s story “At the Bay” will be screened on 2 July at Wellesley College, Days Bay, as part of a commemoration of the death a century ago of one of our best-known writers. And Sir Ashley Bloomfield, one of our most famous contemporary personalities, will feature in a reconstruction of some of the key scenes from the story.

Planned events here and overseas for the centenary include a conference at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington from July 7-9.

The writer’s family, the Beauchamps, holidayed in Eastbourne in the late 1890s and early 1900s, renting a house known as The Glen on a hillside above Muritai Rd – probably the model for the Burnells’ holiday bungalow in the story – and building a cottage at Downes Point, Days Bay.

Mansfield recreated the life of that summer colony while convalescing in Switzerland –suffering from tuberculosis and homesick for New Zealand, she wanted to capture every detail of those long-ago holidays. She completed this best-known of all her works, written in eight parts, on September 11, 1921.

Made by a group of Eastbourne authors and researchers, along with Days Bay filmmaker and photographer Simon Hoyle, the presentation draws on historical images of the area - particularly Muritai - south of the village, where most of the story is set. It includes narration, reenactments by six local actors of four scenes from the story, and a soundtrack of music by cellist Arnold Trowell, a close

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Knighted for his services to health during the Covid pandemic, Sir Ashley, who was associated with Butterfly Creek Theatre Troupe in the “noughties”, stepped up to play swimsuited Stanley Burnell – he who rushed to be “first man in” to the water – when director Anne Manchester’s original choice fell through. He says it was a great opportunity to be part of a “very worthwhile local effort” involving just some of the many talented people in Eastbourne.

Sir Ashley says Katherine Mansfield’s link with Days Bay was one of the first things he learnt about Eastbourne and the Bays when he shifted here with his family in 1998. “And of course it was great fun donning the oldfashioned swimsuit and imagining what Stanley Burnell would have been like!”

Mansfield scholar John Horrocks, who lives in Days Bay and has a background in psychology as well as environmental health, presented a paper to a German conference last July about Mansfield’s spa experiences (which began in Rotorua) and her gift for spotting and satirising the more bogus aspects of these popular treatments.

Pondering the approaching centenary, Dr Horrocks recalled the annual event known as Bloomsday, when readers of James Joyce’s Ulysses dress up in period costume and recite passages from the 1904 story – and he reckoned something similar could be done here.

A full-length feature film was out of the question but thinking locally, he was aware of the role Wellesley College’s main building would have played in its earlier iteration as Days Bay House, a hotel the author would have surely walked past on more than one occasion.

“It’s grown in scope,” he says, “and morphed into a photographic tribute, something we hope will be long-lasting and that Mansfield readers and perhaps students can enjoy for years to come.”

Author and historian Redmer Yska will give a presentation on his recently published Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station book, and Ali Carew from the Historical Society of Eastbourne will discuss some of the historic photos used in the AV, plus others not able to be included.

The presentation, which the producers believe is a beautiful creation in itself, has already been invited to screen in Strasbourg as part of a Mansfield conference there in October and will be shown at Eastbourne Library as part of a proposed exhibition in September about KM’s relationship with the Eastern Bays.

At The Bay by Katherine Mansfield, Wellesley College, Days Bay, 2 July, 7 pm.

Tickets from http://www.eventfinda. co.nz/2023/at-the-bay/Wellington