In Conversation With Chelsea Grace
There’s something special about Edinburgh during August. For three weeks the city swells into a vibrant hub of creativity. Yet amidst this impending frenzy and a busy schedule of rehearsals actor Chelsea Grace manages to carve out an afternoon to meet with me over Zoom to discuss her upcoming performance in Salamander.
“There’s an electricity in the air, and, I’m not going to lie, there’s a chaos as well … it’s beautifully chaotic.” she observes, when I ask her what it’s like being at the epicentre for arts and culture in the UK, at least for the next few weeks, “To just be surrounded by wonderful, wacky creatives, all the time, throughout the whole month of August … I think it’ll be amazing, a lot, but amazing.”
Although this is Salamander’s second run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, it’s a first for Chelsea and something that initially drew her to the production. “At the start of every year, I have a paper journal, which is very old school I know, that keeps my diary and lets me write out my goals, and at the start of 2023 one of them was to be in the Fringe, and it’s been ticked off, so I’m very very grateful for that”. She then went on to read up on the inspiration for the play (the murder of a sex worker in Leith in the 1980s) and was hooked, and sent off for an audition pack.
The monologue alone was enough to capture her attention. “The human, vulnerable element was of it was very nice” she notes, “it highlighted that human distraction … trying to protect yourself so you think about something else when actually you’re feeling this …” Chelsea laughs as she recalls a house-fire when, despite having burns, her mother was most distressed that her eyelashes had come off and she would need to buy a new frying pan.
We soon get to talking about Chelsea’s character, V, who she describes as “brash, sassy, with a big-heart … very strong, she’s not just tough, she’s strong, and I think they’re two very different things”. It’s hard to reconcile this with the wonderfully charming and affable face on my screen and I find myself asking Chelsea how she is able to embody such a formidable character. “There’s parts of her that are definitely in me … then there’s … challenging elements to her that I found tricky, but now that I feel I know her a bit more, they’re fun … because it’s not exactly like me, and I think as an actor … you want to feel like its a part of you so you can still feel its truthful, but I think the kind of part of you that you don’t always necessarily get to show or experience”.
It turns out there are also a lot of similarities between V and her mum; “I don’t know how my mum would feel about me saying that,” she admits sheepishly.
Innately observational, Chelsea’s ability to see herself and others in her characters allows her to add an authenticity and uniqueness to her roles. During a rehearsal the actor who first played V, Claire Docherty, got to see Chelsea’s performance and enjoyed seeing the different aspects she had coaxed out of the character. “You can have the same character but if its portrayed by someone different … you can only give your own lived experiences … only bring yourself and what you know” she reflects, before adding “V has had a couple of lives before, but I’m very excited to live the most current one”.
This desire for authenticity in theatre also drives the writing in Salamander, as it unearths the hidden histories of some of the most marginalised (and often most vulnerable) people in society to life. “Nothing short of horrific … some of the kind of ideas and values that were placed upon these women is just tragic” notes Chelsea as we discuss the way sex work is so stigmatised in society. An issue further complicated by the lack of safety and support structures in place for sex workers, “if anything I think it’s even more tricky now … a lot of sex work has gone online … if you don’t know what’s going on how can you police that?”
By giving a voice to those typically silenced in mainstream media Salamander draws attention to issues that are all easy to sweep under the rug; we can forget that there is a person behind the name and the age they are reduced to in the news.
Rather than presenting a polarised view of sex workers or using them as one dimensional clichés to prop up an agenda, Salamander portrays a spectrum of flawed, yet refreshingly human characters. It takes the experiences of people often categorised as vulnerable, as needy, as figures of sympathy, but writes them in such a way as to give these empower the individuals being portrayed and give them ownership over their narrative. As Chelsea notes “Mhairi and Callum managed to create really beautiful, human naturalistic believable female characters”. By writing such authentic and complex characters Salamander helps to shape the way in which female characters are written. “It’s definitely gotten better as years have gone by, but I think we’ve still got a lot of work to do … definitely taking a step in the right direction of creating female characters that are interesting without trying to be and interesting because they’re just people, they’re just interesting people, people are interesting, if you let them be” observes Chelsea.
Soon we digress into talking about human nature, of the polarisation of “good” and “bad”, and moral absolutism.
“Innately, I don’t think you do get good people and bad people, I think you just get people who do things. Sometimes you get people who do loads of bad things in an order and they behave a certain way, then you get loads of people who do good things in an order … sometimes I think you get “good” people who do bad things and I think you get bad people who do good things, if you look at it that way … but I think realistically people are just human, and I think if you put people in certain environments they’ll react in a certain way,” reflects Chelsea, “I just think people, at the core of it, are very complex and very interesting, but what’s beautiful is … the simple part of being human is the fact we want to feel heard and understood, and that usually comes when we’re in a group … so I think these women are all very complex, but the simple beauty of it all is that they’re just women looking out for one another really”.
Although at first it seems far-fetched to view Salamander as “just the simple story of gals being gals”, as Chelsea does, it isn’t implausible. Although on the surface it is a story about sex workers, underneath it lie universal themes of female friendship, sisterhood, looking after and being looked after by friends. Chelsea is full of praise for the writing, “the feeling they [Mhairi McCall and Cal Ferguson] have managed to capture … the sisterhood and the camaraderie, and what being surrounded by strong women can do, I think that itself is very relatable … its just … tells a very beautiful story in that respect”.
Listening to Chelsea talk I’m curious to know what she has lined up next, and am not surprised to learn she is aiming to start an MA in Acting Classical And Contemporary Text at the Royal Conservatoire Of Scotland in September. Whilst her HND at Glasgow City College allowed her to explore a wide range of contemporary texts and develop her acting style (one centred in observation and experiences) with the support of her teachers, it was not a classical education. “I don’t currently have the tools to be able to pick and choose which acting styles to choose and when, choose between what is “technically correct” and intuit what feels good” she reflects.
Yet coming from a working class background, this course is dependent on her obtaining all her funding.
As Chelsea admits, although “there are a lot of amazing practices in place that do try to help people who are working class … I’ve found that anything up to a BA you get a lot of scholarships or financial grants that can help you, but as soon as you kind of hit beyond the age of twenty five or you go for a postgraduate … that’s when I think it becomes tricky”.
These concerns highlight a systematic exclusion of working class people from careers in the arts.
Working in the arts is notoriously unstable. There’s often additional costs, job insecurity, and a lack of paid opportunities. Those from a privileged background are able to navigate these minefields easier as they have the funds to support themselves without having to juggle paid work in order to pursue opportunities. These issues are further complicated by a societal perception that, as Chelsea reflects, “working in the arts is seen as a hobby”.
Although her background has made establishing a career in the arts more difficult, self-proclaimed “working class gal” Chelsea fully embraces this aspect of her identity, “It’s also a big part of who I am. I think it keeps me humble. I’m very glad for the upbringing that I’ve had, it’s taught me a lot about being grateful and I think it means that when I do get successes, whether it be professional or personal, I really, really cherish them. Especially something as incredible as Salamander.”
Salamander is running as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from the second to the sixteenth of August 2023, at the Assembly Roxy (upstairs), with performances starting at 18:55.
For more information or to buy a ticket go to https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/salamander.
Chelsea Grace is an actor and theatre maker from Inverness. Chelsea has been part of the Scottish Youth Theatre National Ensemble, Sanctuary Queer Arts Young Company and Traverse Young Writers. Chelsea has received training from RADA and will be starting her MA in acting at RCS this September. She has worked with reputable companies such as Pinewood Studios, has featured on Play, Pie And A Pint’s social media channels and was co – lead in “Larry & Lucy” which she performed in New York City. She has also had her own work produced by Framework Theatre Company and F-Bomb Theatre. Follow her on Instagram @faceofchelseagrace.