After 12 years of freelancing in the New Zealand theatre industry Rachel feels like it was only yesterday when her Mother broke down and cried as she told her she wanted to study ‘drama’. “Why can’t you get a proper job at the Welcome Bay Chemist, like that nice girl Belinda?”
Rachel has worked as a stand up comic, actor, and predominantly as a stage manager, touring nationally and abroad for a vast range of New Zealand theatre companies including the Royal New Zealand Ballet, World of Wearable Arts, New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, NBR New Zealand Opera and Armstrong Creative. However, she has cast aside her spanner and traded up for a pen in the hope of carving out a career as a writer.
In 2007 she completed her Masters in Script writing at Victoria University’s IIML, where she won the Michael Herschfeld Development scholarship for her television script Kanikani Spit.
She was then commissioned to co-write (with Kate Morris) End Game for Capital E: National Theatre for Children that toured New Zealand in 2010. Capital E also commissioned Rachel to write Shu's Song and Grandad's Lucky Storm. She has also written for Duffy Books in Homes.
In 2012 Rachel teamed up with Julia Truscott to write the comedy musical Checkout Chicks that premiered at Auckland Theatre Company’s ‘Next Big Thing’ festival. She also wrote an adaptation of Margaret Mahy's A Man Who's Mother Was a Pirate, commissioned by Auckland Theatre Company.