Faculty of Biomedical Sciences administrator Chelsea McRae, left, with younger brother, second-year tauira August Gaiger. The pair are helping to stage Dunedin Fringe Festival show Casketcase this March.
2026 Dunedin Fringe Festival show Casketcase features not one but two members of Ōtakou Whakaihu Waka’s talented community, brother and sister August Gaiger and Chelsea McRae. The pair chat with Internal Communications Adviser Koren Allpress about the business of show.
How far could a female character go while committing an act of revenge in a theatrical production before the audience no longer supports her?
Actor, playwright and Faculty of Biomedical Sciences administrator Chelsea McRae is about to find out. Chelsea, also an Otago alum, is staging the play she has written, Casketcase, as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival this March.
Her younger brother, August Gaiger (Ngāti Kahungunu, Sāmoa), is studying towards a Bachelor of Music and is responsible for the sound design and production in Casketcase.
Chelsea says Casketcase focuses on Clare, who has been running Aotearoa New Zealand’s most successful 'true crimes of New Zealand' podcast, Casketcase, for the past four years. The podcast is bankrolled by Clare’s footballer husband, Logan.
“And Logan has decided that he would like to be a special guest on the first ever live airing of the podcast. So they've gotten to 50,000 followers, and to celebrate, they're having a live recording,” Chelsea says.
“So it's kind immersive, the audience is invited in as longtime fans of the podcast to come and listen to it.”
Woven into the mix is the story of Giulia Tofana, a woman from Italy in the 1600s.
“She sold poison to women in abusive relationships under the guise of beauty products. And it's rumoured that she poisoned more than 600 men.
“This was at a time when, of course, divorce wasn't legal. And, for many women, being a widow was the only way to get out of abusive relationships.”
Chelsea started writing Casketcase as part of her honours dissertation in 2025 that, in part, examined ‘good for her’ horror. Chelsea will start her Master’s in Theatre Studies in Semester 2.
“‘Good for her’ horror is a new, emerging subgenre that came out of the #MeToo movement. It’s about creating horror that woman can identify with, rather than your slasher types which are meant to appeal to the male gaze.
“They’re horrors, like Promising Young Woman, where you don’t have to see everything that a woman’s gone through in order to support her gaining revenge.”
Chelsea hopes the audience of Casketcase will support Clare in her journey, because the audience’s level of support will ultimately determine how Casketcase ends.
“It’s got alternate endings, one of them is a filmed ending and one of them is a live ending. There are live polls through out the show, so depending on how the audience votes, that will change the outcome of the show.”
Chelsea says she was trying to find ways to make a story about a podcast an interesting piece of theatre, which is why she included the polls.
“You could fall into a trap of it just being two people sitting and talking for a long time, and that could get really boring. So I wanted to really get the audience involved.
“And we've got little elements of horror, a couple of jump scares and a few things like that. Have a few special effects and practical effects and some fake blood.
“You know, all the important bits.”
Moving behind the scenes
Second year tauira August Gaiger, left, with older sister Faculty of Biomedical Sciences administrator Chelsea McRae.
August has found himself stepping out of the spotlight while finding a new way to contribute to a stage show, saying Chelsea “roped him in” to the role of sound design and production.
“I’m working with the show’s composer, Mario [Sadra-de Jong], on the theme song for the show, and the soundscape which basically plays throughout the show. So there’s some sound effects and that kind of thing,” August says.
August has helped create soundtracks for videos previously, where he would have visual media available to work off, and is enjoying the new challenge of producing music for a live show.
“It’s definitely new, I’m enjoying it.
“It’s interesting working off of a script. I’m starting to sit in on rehearsals so I can kind of get a bit more of a feel for what kind of sound fits what kind of scene.”
He says it’s not the first time he’s been involved in theatre and live performance; “I started tap dancing when I was 10 or 11”.
He performed as an actor, singer and dancer up until 2023, and spent time at the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art studying musical theatre before switching to Otago.
Chelsea says she submitted Casketcase for consideration for the Dunedin Fringe Festival in September last year, and was given the greenlight in October. She held auditions in November, and the whole crew – a mix of professional and semi-professional actors and stage hands- has been working together since January.
“We haven’t had a super-long lead in period with our rehearsals.”
Casketcase is being run by Good For Her Productions, which is comprised of Chelsea, her husband Cody McRae, and their longtime friend Mario Sadra-de Jong.
The title for the show, Casketcase, was a sentence Chelsea misheard someone say.
“I was like, casket case, that’s quite fun. They were like that’s ‘not what I said at all’ but it stuck. I liked it because, you know, casket coffin, basket case being more or less out of your mind. And then cases, like case files as in true crime.”