Cassandra Tse

Cassandra is writing a portfolio of new works for Immersive theatre performance that aim to push narrative immersion to the forefront of the experience.

Commenced 2023

Cassandra Tse. (Photo credit: James Cain.)
Cassandra Tse. (Photo credit: James Cain.)

Cassandra is a playwright, director, performer, and the artistic director of Red Scare Theatre Company. She has been shortlisted twice for the Adam NZ Play Award – in 2023 for New Gold Mountain Woman, and 2024 for Before We Slip Beneath the Sea, which won overall Runner-Up and Best Play by a Woman Playwright. Her play Long Ago, Long Ago won Playmarket's Playwrights B4 25 award in 2015, and her musicals Right Dishonourable and M'Lady were both shortlisted for the same award in 2013 and 2017 respectively. Her play Under was commended for the Playwrights Association of New Zealand Long Play Award in 2017. In 2020, she received the New Zealand Society of Authors Auckland Museum Research Grant & Residency, which allowed her to research and write New Gold Mountain Woman from the Michael King Writers' Centre. In addition to her work for the theatre, she also wrote and starred in the five part audio drama Apocalypse Songs in 2020, and has written several short plays for young people published by School Journal.

Cassandra is working on a portfolio of new works for Immersive theatre performance. She seeks to explore ways in which narrative immersion – the sense of being absorbed in, or 'losing oneself' in a story – can be incorporated into Immersive theatre, a form that often demands audience self-awareness.

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Red Scare Theatre Company