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“I’ve had plenty of people tell me that I do too many things. But I’ve always loved everything I do.”
So says Dr Alexandra Watson, 25, who has four degrees from Canterbury University — the most recent a doctorate in musical arts — and has written three musicals, plays five instruments, and holds national titles in aerobatics.
Watson, of Ohoka, started part-time university study when she was just 16. She then skipped Year 13 to start studying full-time in 2018.
She always knew she would study music; she has been playing the piano since she was about six, and also plays cello, flute, harp, violin, and sings. But her love for astronomy, physics, mathematics and engineering led her initially.
“It took me a semester to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I actually started doing a Bachelor of Science in astronomy when I first came. And although I love space, I quickly figured out that actually that wasn’t quite what I wanted to spend my time doing.”
And so she threw herself into maths and music, earning a Bachelor of Science in 2020 and a Bachelor of Music in 2021. She stayed and earned a Master of Arts in mid-2023, then started her doctorate the same year.
“It’s still quite surreal that I have my doctorate because it was something that I was working towards for a significant portion of time.
“Seeing ‘Dr Watson’ written on things is bizarre, but I’m really pleased that I kept going and pursued all of this to the end.”
“There were things that went wrong along the way, things you can’t control, but they all sort of fade into the background, because you just keep going.
“I’ve always been someone who’s been very busy and very driven to keep doing new things and more things. So I don’t tend to dwell on how hard something is. I just get on with it and carry on to the next thing.”
She says she has always had a strong drive, a natural curiosity, and a good sense of what she enjoys doing.
"Music is so creative, and I love creating and the freedom that comes with that. And music has the ability to convey things that other things can't. Music and art have an emotional vulnerability to it that's very unique.
"I will happily sit at the piano for hours and just play and write and sing. And the time just disappears.
“But I also think a lot of it’s down to my parents as well. Ever since I was little, if I came home with another instrument slip to say I want to learn another instrument or do something new, the answer was always, ‘okay’. Then that was just another thing that was added on, and it was never a problem or a challenge.”
Before she was inspired to start writing musicals, Watson got her pilot’s licence at the Canterbury Aero Club when she was 17. She then competed in aerobatics at the South Island Akro Fest regional championships in Blenheim and Ashburton, and won in her category at nationals in Masterton.
“It's merely just a chapter of life, and I had fun doing it,” she said of her aerobatics.
“Everything I've always done has always been, ‘oh, there's an opportunity’. If I am in the position, fortunate position to take it, then I will. And it's meant that I've done lots of fun things.”
Watson’s inspiration to start writing musicals came after she saw Hamilton on the West End.
“I left going, ‘well, if (Hamilton creator and star) Lin-Manuel Miranda can write a historical musical, why can't I?’”
Her mother, Lesley Watson, was a school principal in the UK, and her father, Andrew Watson, is a business development manager for a large-scale industrial pump company.
Watson was born and raised in Kent, UK, and also lived in East Sussex before she and her parents moved to New Zealand in 2013. Her father was a Kiwi, and both her parents wanted her to be schooled here.
She says she learnt how to put on productions through “osmosis”, learning from those around her.
"My mother has had experience in putting concerts and shows and productions together through her work, and by putting the two of us together in one place, we can both organise quite easily."
Her first musical, A Magical Musical Mystery, based on Lewis Carroll’s nonsense verse, was performed with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in 2024. Her second, The First 8, a historical musical about the first eight female pilots of the British Air Transport Auxiliary in World War II, was performed at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2025.
And Watson’s latest musical, CLEO, performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August, is a feminist telling of the life of ancient Egyptian ruler Cleopatra.
“I want this to be my career,” she says of writing musicals.
“It's something you have to build over time. And that time isn't a couple of years; it's like a decade.
"I mean, at the end of the day, the dream is to have a musical on the West End in London.
"There's no point dreaming small.”