For the last two years, Anne has very generously acted as Chair of our committee. She has expertly handled meetings, and given way more time behind the scenes than she could afford, to keep our society running smoothly.
Anne Rimmer has never been far from a theatre. A trained ballet dancer, she first danced onto the Wellington Opera House stage at the age of six. Over seventy years later she maintains her deep love of theatre and dance, and particularly enjoys making audiences laugh. Anne has contributed to productions by many North Shore theatre groups. She directed and designed Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests trilogy for Torbay Theatre in the 1990s. Humble Boy in 2015 won several ACTT Awards, with Anne herself returning to the stage at four days’ notice when a cast member became ill. She directed and designed Private Lives in 2017, Life and Beth in 2021, and designed the ambitious set for ‘Oklahoma’ in 2020.
Earlier, in Canada, Anne directed The Gondoliers, performed in and choreographed The Boyfriend, played Cecily in The Importance of being Earnest, which she has since directed twice, and directed many comedies for small town theatre groups. Between theatre commitments, during her twenty years in Canada she put her degree in chemistry to good use as a research assistant and lab technician, while bringing up her children.
Anne is a long-term conservationist, and has been a guide on Tiritiri Matangi since 1998.
Her book, Tiritiri Matangi : a model of conservation, published in 2004, (new edition 2021) won the Montana Book Award, Environment Section.
She is currently editing the memoirs of Ray Walter, the last lighthouse keeper on Tiritiri, (keeper there 1956-1982), which project is the reason for her stepping down as Chair. We thank her for her service, and will miss her as Chair, but she will still be very active on stage and backstage.
Her unfulfilled ambition is to fly onstage.
