How Jaimee went from the factory floor and late-night auditions to off-Broadway

The former NSW-Victoria border resident will make her off-Broadway stage debut this year, she has written her own play set for release next month, and she has already performed a lead role in a play at Brooklyn.

Having gone to school at Rutherglen and Wangaratta, Gaston knew from a young age that she wanted to pursue a career in musical theatre.

At the age of four she started learning dance at Rutherglen, near Albury-Wodonga, and did her first BYTESized Productions youth theatre show, Aladdin, at eight.

Aged 10, she fell in love with New York City during a family trip, adamant she would return there to work one day.

Plenty of peers doubted her Big Apple dream, but she had enough mentors who only encouraged her.

"I had a lot of teachers and people in musical theatre circles and outside of school who really believed in me," she said during a trip back to her family home near Rutherglen for Christmas and New Year.

"They didn't set any limits on what you could do."

Her main mentors were Cathedral College Wangaratta English and drama teacher and award-winning author Marg Hickey; Border drama teacher Sharyn Hill; and dance schools including Rutherglen Academy of Dance, Murray Youth Performing Arts and Pulsate Dance Force (Wangaratta).

During her gap year working for Uncle Tobys at Wahgunyah, Gaston applied to myriad colleges and university programs to study theatre in New York City.

"I'd get up at midnight to get ready for a 1am Zoom audition for all of those places," Gaston said.

"My parents deserve every good thing in the world for trying to sleep through me belting out an audition in the house at 1am or 2am. Then I'd go back to sleep and wake up at 5am to go to work."

In New York City, Gaston rented an apartment from Australian actress Stef Dawson (Annie Cresta in The Hunger Games), who answered her Facebook plea for help.

In August 2023, she began her studies with Circle in The Square Theatre School, which is the only theatre conservatory located inside a Broadway theatre.

"It's called Circle in The Square because it's the only round theatre on Broadway," she said.

"It's in Times Square so it's right in the thick of it; it was crazy walking out of the theatre and being in Times Square.

"When I first got there Melissa Etheridge: My Window was playing and she had a great relationship with the students; she'd walk through our clown classes and give us guitar picks and things like that, then she'd join in."

Gaston said the best life lessons came from watching award-winning actors in their dress rehearsals at Circle in The Square Theatre.

She said that like everyone, they were prone to make mistakes.

"You go in thinking it will be perfect but it's obviously not because they're human," Gaston said.

"It was just lovely to see that at any level, there's still the same stages of development of a show as I experienced when I was eight doing Aladdin!"

Gaston was now part of the development of a play that was set to open off-Broadway in October.

In a show about the life and times of Houdini and the rise of spiritualism in the 1920s, she will play a famous medium, Mina Crandon, who was known as The Witch of Lime Street.

Her dance training will serve her well in a role that requires contortion.

Gaston was also the lead in an original play in Brooklyn called The Cherry Pit, which centred on a group of queer women living in New York City.

She has also written a play called Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head, set to debut on February 20 at its first festival in New York City.

Other highlights were a short film 7 Years of Pazzo, The Australian Theatre Festival cabaret alongside Australian Broadway royalty such as Caroline O'Connor and being a part of the ensemble for an experimental theatre group in Central Park.

"Central Park is a very big tourist destination but it was very cool," she said.

"I liked the idea that we are making someone's New York experience; imagine just stumbling upon this!"