Isobel MacKinnon is a busy lassie. The Wellington-based performance maker and director has been touring with multi-award-winning show My Best Dead Friend (co-created with Anya Tate-Manning) to Tauranga, Dunedin and Nelson arts festivals, and the Melbourne Fringe, where it was nominated for Best Performance and took out the Summerhall Award to tour the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and present it at Summerhall theatre. Isobel directed Jo Randerson and Thomas LaHoood in Soft N Hard, the Barbarian Productions “wife’n’husband” show which most recently toured to Tempo Festival at Q Theatre.

Isobel has been the recipient of multiple awards for her original works, including the Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for Most Original Production (Dinner With Izzy & Simon), NZ Fringe Festival Best in Fringe (2018, My Best Dead Friend; 2015, Wake Up Tomorrow), and Best Director (2018, Force Field, Auckland Fringe; 2015, Wake Up Tomorrow, NZ Fringe). She attended Victoria University and John Bolton Theatre School, and she teaches the acting programme annually at the National Youth Drama School.

Actual Fact, the 2018 STAB Commission which she has created with Meg Rollandi and a team of collaborative artists, opens at BATS Theatre this November.