Interview: Stripping Away the Facade at Camden Fringe
The Camden Fringe Interviews
Rachel Isobel Heritage discusses her show Whiplash
Lockdown Projections’ Rachel Isobel Heritage is stripping away the facade of a gentlemen’s club in her new show Whiplash, letting the strippers’ words be the dominant voice in this provocative piece. Rachel is ideally placed to be that voice, as she has worked in the industry herself, as a means to finance her studies. It does mean Whiplash is told from the perspective of someone who should know.
Whiplash welcomes you into the world of the Olympus Gentlemen’s Club when it plays at The Courtyard Theatre for Camden Fringe 14 – 17 August.
Hi Rachel, thanks for talking to us today. So what’s your role within Whiplash?
I’m the writer and producer of Whiplash. I will also be playing the role of Nikii in this run.
What can audiences expect then?
90 minutes of full frontal, unapologetic honesty and fun that reflects the experience of being a Stripper in the UK post COVID. Whiplash welcomes you to indulgence in not only a front row seat at Olympus Gentleman’s Club, but also the dressing room drama. Watch as one dancers’ controversial plans unfold; could she change the state of the club for the better or shut it down forever?
Where will we find this stripclub then during Camden Fringe?
The Courtyard Theatre – the stage is extremely flexible with lots of space with seating we can shape to show a three dimensional world of the club. I want the audience to feel as much part of the action as the cast on stage.
What was the initial inspiration for Whiplash?
I’ve been working on this show for about two years. I started working as a dancer roughly four years ago, after graduating from my Foundation in Acting in the Lockdown. I didn’t want to continue training while the pandemic was going on, so instead I formed my company. However, I still needed to survive and stripping had always been a job that had been presented to me as going hand in hand with acting. I can positively say that’s true: You’re underpaid, the work is all consuming, albeit infrequent and unreliable, and you more often than not only say things that other people want to hear.
The biggest thing the two jobs share is, of course, that they are both completely misunderstood. Neither roles are glamorous nor are they easy things that anyone can do. In the time I’ve been dancing, I’ve learnt more about the industry itself and its deep rooted issues. But those issues aren’t because of the nature of the job at all, they spring from the discrimination against the workers. With clubs radically reducing in numbers across the country – due to licences being taken away from new Nil-Cap bans – on top of internal issues within clubs overcharging in-house fees and commission rates of the unpaid workforce.
There is a huge Sex Workers Rights Movement in this country right now, and I am lucky that there are fellow workers in this field fighting for my right to continue to work and survive safely. I want to contribute to that in the best way I know how: on stage.
What is it you hope audience leave thinking about?
I hope if they were “anti-strip club” they’d change their minds, based on actually listening to the perspectives of Strippers. I hope people’s assumptions on the industry being harmful to workers based on moralistic grounds or false narratives of women being ‘forced’ to work in clubs is changed.
I hope it inspires people to listen in and continue to support the Sex Workers Rights Movement. I hope people enjoy being in our world for a bit, as much as I do.
Is there one question you feel we should have asked you?
What my fears are for the play. I think all Theatre makers are scared that their work will be rejected, it’s the natural imposters syndrome that comes with being a creator. For Whiplash, I fear that the message may be twisted in the wrong way. I am a big believer in nuance in storytelling so I felt it was important to have such nuance in my characters and themes of the play. However, Stripping as an industry has always been victim to those in places of power and/or influence twisting its nature as a job into something it isn’t, in order to fit their own narratives. I fear that same reception for Whiplash.
As a result, I knew it was important to state from the start that this was a play about dancers by an actual dancer. I didn’t want my community to think this was just another piece of fiction written by someone who didn’t know what they were talking about. Yet, that in itself sparks my own personal fears. I am an actor and recent graduate of drama school. I am acutely aware of how agents, casting directors and the wider industry may judge and refuse me for being open about my job. I believe it already has. Which is ironic because I started working as a dancer so I could actually gain the necessary financial freedom needed in order to realistically sustain life as an actor, in an industry with undeniable accessibility issues. And such prejudice is true for Sex Workers in all fields, both professional and personal. And that’s just not fair.
If I am to do my part in tackling those issues as an artist, then I will proudly put my name on it. That’s what artistic integrity is for me. And artistic integrity trumps my own self protections from this industry’s potential prejudice.
If budget was not an issue, what’s the one piece of scenery/ set you’d love to have in your show?
We have a dedicated cast of ten people as well as a lovely team assisting us for the get in and get out. So essentially we’re shooting for the moon with the budget we have, with full confidence we can create Olympus by all working together.
However, there’s this one club in Bethnal Green which I visited during my last run at Camden Fringe. It has this amazing spiral staircase that surrounds the stage, where a pole runs up three floors to the ceiling. When I went there, I imagined a live band on the balcony of the first floor, with all the action on stage and amongst the audience in the flurry of the club floor. The lighting was bright pink and purple and the air was an aroma of tequila and So Scandal. Faux leather single arm chairs, too low to comfortably stand up from, against tiny tables with fake candles make up the front row. If money were no object, I’d copy and paste that club on every stage I could.
Many thanks to Rachel for her time to chat with us. You can catch Whiplash when it plays at The Courtyard Theatre between 14th and 17th August.
Further information and tickets available here.