Rachel House is both an actor and director and has performed in many NZ films including Nikki Caro’s WHALE RIDER and Taika Waititi’s EAGLE VS. SHARK and BOY (in the role of Auntie Gracie). On BOY Rachel also worked behind the scenes as the kids’ acting coach. She has also been part of numerous television productions including the BBC co-production of MADIGAN’S QUEST the award-winning comedy SUPERCITY.
Rachel has been awarded a number of Wellington Theatre Critics’ Chapmann Tripp Acting awards: Best Newcomer, Best Supporting Actress for Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, and Most Outstanding Performance for Witi Ihimaera’s Woman Far Walking.
In 2002, she directed Have Car Will Travel by emerging Maori playwright Mitch Tawhi Thomas. She was awarded Director of the Year at the Wellington Theatre Awards and has continued to direct both theatre and television. Highlights include Neil La Butes Mercy Seat; the Canadian, Cambridge (UK) and Brisbane tour of Frangipani Perfume by Makerita Urale; the national and Australian tour of award-winning Hinepau for children; Tusiata Avia’s internationally toured one woman show Wild Dogs Under my Skirt and Briar Grace Smith’s When Sun and Moon Collide for Maori television.
She graduated from the Prague film school in 2008 and her first short film THE WINTER BOY by Kylie Meehan has travelled throughout NZ, France, Japan, Canada and America.
Her most recent work includes playing Maraea in WHITE LIES and being on the core cast of Gaylene Preston’s HOPE AND WIRE; directing the premiere production of the Mitch Tawhi Thomas play Hui at the International Arts Festival in Auckland and the Maori Troilus and Cressida that performed at the Globe Theatre in London as part of the cultural Olympiard in 2012, for which she was awarded Director of the Year and Production of the year at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. That same year she was awarded an Arts Laureate as an investment in excellence across a range of art forms for an artist with prominence and outstanding potential for future growth.
Session: White Lies – Tuakiri Huna and Cultural Integrity
