Rachel Clarke grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, in a society divided by inequality, and this experience shapes her art until today. She studied Theatre Directing in Berlin, learned methods of the Theatre of the Oppressed (Forum and Legislatives Theatre) from Augusto Boal in Rio, Janeiro.
After working in theatres across Germany, she moved to Laos, SE Asia where she worked in tandem with villagers, where she got involved in documentary filmmaking. She left after 5 years, leaving behind an artists organisation in the competent leadership of her colleagues. After her return to Europe, she re-discovered oral storytelling in Scotland and created interdisciplinary performances and toured Germany with three storytelling programmes "Rice God Rocket - stories from SE Asia", "Wild Poetic Tales - a storytelling journey across Scotland", and "Love Shivers - an evening of urban love stories", each time as a duo with live music.
She founded the Storytelling Arena - as a live stage in Berlin with performances by professional storytellers in English and German. From autumn 2015 as Syrian artists and academics arrived in Berlin, the stage became trilingual.
During the pandemic, she started writing epic verse stories on contemporary themes,
which are now being realised as short films with Syrian filmmakers and artists.
The countrywide project "STORYFIELD" in Germany, is establishing a method for creating multilingual dialogue between people from different cultures.