"No audience owes you anything" – Acting alumna Rhysy Williams on voguing for FKA Twigs and life after Catalyst

Rhysy Williams is a British actor based in Berlin. Since graduating the Acting BA, she has worked across film, commercials, theatre, event curation and ballroom. She featured in Mamántula (Ion de Sosa, 2023) during her studies, which went on to win awards at international film festivals. During her third year, she wrote, produced and performed The Queen's Head, which ran at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival – the world's largest performing arts festival – (read about that trip on our blog) and won the Keep It Fringe Fund Award. This summer, she was voguing alongside her Berlin ballroom family during FKA Twigs' Body High tour, in front of 12,000 people at the Tempodrom. This August she returns to a smaller stage for another run of her solo show.

If you are weighing up a life in professional performance, Rhysy's story is worth reading slowly. It is not a tidy account of one big break. It is freelance work stitched together month by month, a solo show reworked over nearly forty performances, a competitive ballroom scene that gave her a sense of home before her acting career gave her a living, and the particular vertigo of going from a stadium stage to the S-Bahn platform in the space of an hour. We spoke with her about all of it.

The Queen's Head, two years on

Rhysy first performed The Queen's Head at Catalyst. From there it went to the Edinburgh Fringe, and this August she will perform it for close to the fortieth time.

"When I first performed the piece at Catalyst it felt like I was testing out my concept and characters and asking myself ‘will they get it?’ but also with full confidence/ delusion of ‘this can change the world’” she says. Edinburgh recalibrated that. "The Fringe taught me that whatever artistic integrity you think you have, you must abandon it unless you have a team of people doing all the production and promotion work for you. It was reaffirmed to me that no audience owes you anything." She learned to read a room, to treat an empty house as a night off rather than a verdict, and to weigh a good time slot over a prestige venue.

Two years of audiences have changed her relationship to the material. "This piece now has a life of its own. People have experiences with it that I don't. Instead of forcing perfection and constant reworking, I trust myself a lot more as an actress to find new outcomes within the material, and with every new audience and venue. I now sit in each line more comfortably and can change the whole trajectory of the story on the spot, just because I feel like it."

Freelance acting work in Berlin

Rhysy stayed in Berlin after graduating. "There are a lot of jobs for artists, dancers, actors and writers in this city, but you have to look for it and create your own opportunities." Her freelance calendar moves between her solo shows, casting preparation, writing for galleries, private tutoring and extra work on German television. She has found new routes for work since arriving in Berlin, “I also find myself in stretches of solely doing commercial dance work for a few months, which I never saw as a possibility for myself when I first arrived.”

Screen work remains the hardest to secure. "It requires that I invest in things like improving my showreel, getting new headshots, email, email and more email," she says. Most of the film projects she's attached to right now are slow-moving, independent productions, some of which may never be finished. "But I always enjoy the process."

Finding Berlin's ballroom scene

Rhysy discovered ballroom as a teenager through films like The Queen (1968), The Aggressives (2005) and Kiki (2016) that trace the experiences of Black and brown trans people and queer youth within the scene. She started following accounts such as Vogue Rites in London and Paris Ballroom TV, and knew some of Berlin's ballroom community by name years before she moved to the city. "My now friends and family were my celebrities back then."

Once she started attending community sessions and functions in Berlin, including TgotT, Berlin Ballroom Pier and Sunday School, something shifted. "I was instantly validated in my trans identity, and I suddenly felt like life made more sense surrounded by other trans women, learning from them in workshops, using community resources in my transition, watching the girls on the ballroom floor. I found this warmth in such a cold city, solidified my path and there was no stopping me." She describes ballroom as a space where trans people are celebrated for their transness rather than despite it, and calls that space essential in a society that so often opposes it.

Learning vogue fem in Berlin

Rhysy learned to vogue from hours of archival footage from the 1980s through the 2000s, and directly from Berlin's own ballroom community. Magia Marciano taught her the foundations of vogue fem, how to listen to the beat and the spirit of voguing itself. Magia founded TgoT, which brought a new generation of young trans women into German ballroom, and later Sunday School, a function that began in 2022 as a small, private gathering and is now a funded, recurring event. Rhysy is part of the organising team; their next ball is on 30 August at ACUD club.

She's quick to name the rest of her chosen family in the scene: Joana Garcon, Mandhla Gucci, Misi Marciano, Jamila Revlon, Naikee Basquiat, Azra Marciano, Ambika, Ambrosia and Sophie, all women she says have taught her and pushed her since she started.

Three stages, three different kinds of nerve

Rhysy practice spans ballroom, theatre and film sets – each demands something different from her.

"Walking a ball is very circumstantial. Everything you prepared could not go as planned, and you must pull through and still give your all. Maybe you practised every day that week, you know that the trophy is yours, but you get to the ball and they play your least favourite beats for your category, and nobody is clapping. You don't feel how you wanted to, but the panel can already see you, so you have to give your all regardless." She has walked and won her category enough times to be recognised internationally within it, and no longer feels she has to prove herself to a room the way she once did. But the unpredictability, she says, never fully goes away. She spent almost three years without a house before joining the kiki house of Telfar and, more recently, the Porcelain house of Miyake Mugler.

On stage, the pressure is different. "When I put on a show, I ensure that everything goes exactly how I planned it to go, and if it doesn't then I know how to work with it. I am always completely relaxed on stage, commanding and controlling an audience's attention is something I really enjoy, however the need to prove myself with every performance is still there. I love to be absolutely exhausted after I come off stage."

Screen acting comes with the most challenges. "I do not have anywhere near the guarantee of payoff on a film. It's a combination of not being able to see what you did until it's already done, the editor being the one truly in charge of your performance in the end, and my gender dysphoria. I wish I could look and feel how I do now in every screen project I've ever done – but that just comes with transitioning". Casting feedback compounds the uncertainty. "I have had great meetings with great casting directors and they tell me I was really good, then I don't get the role. This aspect of film and TV is so humbling and can send you into a spiral easily. It is important to know that your time will come. Not every role is meant for you."

Voguing with FKA twigs at Tempodrom

FKA twigs has a long history of platforming ballroom performers, from bringing Leiomy Maldonado on stage in 2015 to the ballroom-influenced sound of her own records. When the Body High tour reached its European leg, Rhysy watched Amsterdam's ballroom scene appear on stage with Twigs and assumed they would tour with her. Then Paris and London followed, and this time it was people from her own house.

"I was in the UK at the time, the Berlin date was in four days. With no hesitation I booked a flight back to Berlin and just hoped that we would get the call. Of course we did." She landed in Berlin on the Friday morning and went straight to the Tempodrom.

The moment it became real for her came earlier than the performance itself. "When we walked from the dressing room to the Tempodrom stage for the soundcheck, I saw just how big this empty stadium was, and I saw Twigs in normal clothes, rehearsing my favourite songs from the setlist. We were part of the rehearsal, not just spectators." Standing in the wings before the show, she repeated to herself, "you are doing this for a reason and you will kill it," trying to talk her body down from the adrenaline. "When I walked out on stage in front of 12,000 people, following Joana Juicy Garcon, then hitting a pose, all my nerves left and it all suddenly felt very correct."

Twigs brought the group back out for the curtain call and spoke with Rhysy directly. "I had an out of body experience. I'm still processing it. Life continuing is very humbling. Do I really have to go from being on stage with Twigs to the S-Bahn?"

The Queen's Head now, and what's next for Rhysy Williams

Performing The Queen's Head has become easier over time, which is exactly why Rhysy keeps rebuilding parts of it. "The show is completely different every time I do it, because I have more ability to create new moments within it. A lot of the lines have changed, the pacing is completely different now, there are long silences, physical comedy is not covered by fast dialogue anymore. I try to be very present with the audience for the whole duration, taking whatever they give me and using it to emphasise the comedy of the moment."

A Halloween edition is planned for her October dates in Berlin, with hopes of taking the show to London and beyond, and of stretching it into a longer piece with an interval. "The possibilities for The Queen's Head are endless."

Beyond the show, Rhysy is starting a regular cabaret gig in Berlin, work she hopes will ease some of the freelance pressure and free up time for her transition, for securing an agent and for building her screen portfolio. A theatre residency in Leipzig runs at the end of September, and a production in Düsseldorf is in early discussion for next year. Sunday School continues to grow, and Rhysy would like to throw her own ball within the next year. "To be busy is a blessing, and I am excited for the future."

Get tickets to Rhysy' next show, watch her showreel, listen to her voice reel, or find her on Instagram, Spotlight, Filmmakers.eu and IMDb.

If her path speaks to yours, read more about the Acting programme at Catalyst.