With three suitors—Slender, Dr. Caius, and Fenton—all vying for her hand in marriage, Anne Page is certainly at the centre of all the mayhem unfolding in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Earlier this summer, we sat down for a conversation with Rachel Angco, who is making her Bard debut this Season as Anne Page and Simple in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Fleance and Macduff’s Child in Macbeth. 

Learn more about how Rachel’s love of music led to her to acting, the mindset shifts that allowed her to take on roles like Simple and Fleance/Macduff’s Child, and the firsts from her Bard debut that stand out to her!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into theatre?
I got into performing through music. My first voice coach also happened to be my mom’s best friend, and I would sing at jazz bars with her when I was 11 years old. Then in high school, I joined the choir and did some musicals. That kind of led me into acting, but it wasn’t until university that I started focusing just on acting. I did my BFA in Acting at UBC, while simultaneously completing a Master of Management at Sauder. I’ve been able to keep my momentum going and started performing professionally just last year. I’m grateful for my start in music because that’s really helped me in my acting jobs so far.

Rachel Angco as Simple in The Merry Wives of Windsor (2026) | Photo by Emily Cooper

In The Merry Wives of Windsor, you play two very different characters, Anne Page and Simple. What has it been like to balance these two very different roles?
When I auditioned, they only saw me for Anne Page, and they put a lot of faith in me to also do the Simple track because they’re so different. It’s been an opportunity for me to really stretch myself in terms of what I can play and what I can expect from myself in future. In the rehearsal process, I actually struggled quite a bit with Simple. It felt so out of my comfort zone and so awkward in my body that it felt like it was never going to work. Rebecca asked if I could just do my best teenage boy, and naturally, I thought of my big brother. He’s four years older than me, and he was kind of a stereotypical angsty, nonchalant teenage boy. I took my inspiration from him—as I do a lot of things—and thought of his physicality and his voice. Then I brought it up a notch to dramatize it.

In our conversation with Cameron Grant, who plays Fenton, he mentioned was that one of the challenges of making the audience root for a relationship like Anne Page and Fenton’s is that they’re not on stage together for very long. Can you talk a little about building that dynamic together?
First and foremost, it really helps that Cameron is just lovely. He’s so easy to get along with and so joyful, and I think that really helped bring out the joy in Anne Page, too. There was also the technical aspect of adding Anne Page into the bar scene at the end, when the plot is revealed. That was initially all Fenton, and then one afternoon during Previews, Cameron had the great idea to add Anne in. We had a brief chat with [director] Rebecca [Northan], and we went through the text on what would make sense to split up. It was a good test for my cortisol, because the first time I joined him in that scene was with an audience. But that really helped tell the story and let Anne exist longer in the show. I also think the lovability of Fenton and Anne is built in their own individual interactions with everybody else as well. Anne is supposed to be this sweet, radiant beam of light to everybody, even if she doesn’t want to marry them, and I think that lets the audience love her a little bit more. I mean, I love her for it.

Cameron Grant as Fenton and Rachel Angco as Anne Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor (2026) | Photo by Emily Cooper

In Macbeth, you play Fleance and Macduff’s Child, who are characters that are much younger than you. How do you approach that kind of challenge as an actor?
Playing young kids was also very intimidating to me because I’d never done it before. Fleance is this preteen boy, and Macduff’s kiddo is very young. I think she was supposed to be four years old, and in my head, I was like, “I hate to break it to you, but that might be impossible.” What was helpful to me in my process were my conversations with [director] Stephen [Drover] about not falling into the stereotype of what a child is supposed to be, and more just understanding the device that those characters play in the grand scheme of the story. For example, the scene with Lady Macduff and Macduff’s Child acts as this little moment of levity, so I went into that knowing that my goal wasn’t to make people believe I was six years old, it was to make people believe that there’s love and hope and light here, only for it to be shattered. It was the same with Fleance too. Fleance is there to show a relationship to Banquo and the possibility of what could be in the future. Thinking of it like that helped take the pressure off and allowed me to play more with those characters, rather than being caught up in silly things like, “Oh, I’m six years old but I’m taller than my mom.”

You mentioned this was your first Season with Bard. What was your relationship with Shakespeare before this?
I came to Bard with my high school, so it’s kind of a crazy full circle moment for me to be here. I studied it in high school, but I didn’t grasp why this work was so influential for so many years because it was just part of the curriculum. Then in university, we had Shakespeare units, and that was when my interest in the text work and analysis really grew. I had also started writing myself, so the poetry and the technical aspects of the text was really fascinating to me. This is my first Shakespeare production though. In both The Merry Wives of Windsor and Macbeth, I’m not doing that much heavy iambic pentameter—I have a lot of nice free verse—which has been an easier welcome into performing Shakespeare. It’s given me an appreciation for it, though, and I hope I have more opportunities to perform Shakespeare.

Cameron Grant as Fenton and Rachel Angco as Anne Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor (2026) | Photo by Emily Cooper

You talked about how music led you into performing. How did you fall in love with music?
My parents aren’t performers, but they love music. We’re Filipino, so it’s in our blood. It’s part of our culture to dance and to sing, so that’s what I grew up around. My Lolo, my grandpa, was a musician for a lot of his life, so the love of music was always around, and it was nice to have someone who also appreciated that and to be able to sing together. I was also inspired by my mom’s best friend, who was my first voice coach. I feel very passionately about the power of music. The reason I love acting is because of its ability to connect people through this shared empathy, and I think music is that, plus a little bit extra. You don’t have to understand what I’m saying, but you can feel it. Then I got into songwriting, just for my own creative expression. I still write and perform my songs at some casual gigs around town.

Do you have a favourite memory from this Season?
Because it’s my first time here—and because I’m pretty early in my career—lots of things feel very new, so the firsts really stick with me. When we first moved to the [Festival] site, I went to our side of the parking lot and I was reading all the signs that said “Bard personnel only,” and I just drove past them without thinking. I literally went around the entire parking lot and was about to reach the exit when I was like, “Wait, what the heck? I am Bard personnel!” And even though these moments stick out to me because I feel so new, the kindness and warmth from the rest of the Company—some of them have been doing this longer than I’ve been alive—has been so inspiring. They’ve been so welcoming of all of us new folks, and part of that is because they all come with a beginner’s mind. For example, I’ve been so inspired by watching and working alongside Jen[nifer] Lines. Every day, every rehearsal, she’s coming in with this bright curiosity and this playfulness that is genuinely such a skill. And Jen’s bouncing ideas off me, and Seabass [Sebastian Kroon] is asking me what I think as Fleance about this thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re new or if you’ve been here for years. There’s no hierarchy or ego. We’re just here to do our job and do our job well, and that’s been really lovely to experience. That’s what makes my first moments so wonderful. I get to experience all of this crazy nervousness and jitters, and then I’m welcomed on stage as equally as someone who’s been doing it forever.

Is there anything you’ve been reading or watching or listening to lately that you’ve been really loving?
I’m slowly making my way through The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. It’s a collection of his thoughts and ideas about the creative act being a way of life and a way of being in your life, and in the beginning, he prefaces it by saying, “You can take what’s useful and leave what’s not.” It’s been offering me a new perspective on integrating creativity as part of an inherent thing of being alive and perceiving the world around you, which has been really inspiring. I’m also patiently and eagerly waiting for Lizzy McAlpine’s new album drop. I love her. She’s one of my favourite songwriters, so I’ve been listening to her song, “The light in the painting,” on repeat.

And finally, when you’re not performing, how do you like to spend your time?
I love being with my family, and I actually just moved back home for the first time in six years, so I’m fortunate that I get to spend lots of time with my family and my niece and nephew, who are really young. Music also takes up a lot of my time. I play some instruments, mainly piano and guitar, but also a little bit of ukulele and bass guitar. I do a lot of singing and songwriting as well. This is kind of new and I don’t even know if it counts as a hobby, but I love a café. My boyfriend’s really into coffee, and he’s kind of gotten me into the café culture here. One of my best friends, she just opened a café in downtown Vancouver—shout-out Unscripted Coffee—and they’ve got a lovely community that they’re building. I like being with my friends, usually doing something creative. Every now and then I have seasons of running. I’m hesitant to even say it because I haven’t run in a few weeks, but I enjoy it. Every now and then, if you catch me in a lucky season of my life, I might be running.

Thanks so much for chatting with us, Rachel!

The clock is ticking on our 2026 Season, so be sure to see Rachel in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Macbeth, running until September 19 in Sen̓áḵw/Vanier Park. Tickets start at $30!