"If I'm feeling happy then it's usually because I am acting!" - Chichester

But as she says, just a couple of months later she is with people she knows she will be friends with for life. And that is the magic of the Youth Theatre

“I started in year five and I'm now in year 12 so I've done seven years but this is my first production with them and I'm absolutely loving it. I didn't get the chance before just with school. I didn't really have the time but now I am at college, it's a little bit more relaxed. I can fit it in and I am completely loving it. Everybody is so sweet. Everybody is so friendly and it is just such a lovely environment.”

Which all helps convince Scarlette that this is where she wants her future to lie: “I would love to go into acting. It's an escape. It's beautiful escapism. If I am feeling emotional, I let it out in my acting, and if I'm feeling happy then it's usually because I am acting! It is such a joy. I think theatre unites people and as I've said I know that I have made friends for life.”

Cinderella, written by Philip Wilson, with music by Jason Carr, directed by Jon Pashley, is on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage from December 17-31. Tickets from the venue. Scarlette, who is aged 16 and a student at Bishop Luffa, is delighted to play the part of one of the stepsisters: “It's great fun. I'm not sure I know the word for it, but they are nuisances. The stepsisters are horrible. In fact, they are very horrible, and some of the things they say are just so silly that all you can do is laugh at them. I think they've just been raised as aristocrats and they have never had anybody tell them ‘No!’ in their life. And now they have to compete with beautiful Cinderella who's had her griefs and her issues in her life. But they're in their own little world and they're just unbelievably shallow. And that's one of the biggest challenges playing them. They've got literally no depth. Before in the past I have played characters that are really emotional and distressed but the stepsisters are just so shallow that they're completely ludicrous.”

This version of Cinderella is much closer to the Grimm Brothers’ version than it is to Disney: “It is quite dark. It is quite out there. I think it's about exploring grief and about what you can do to overcome loss and how you can continue to live your life and continue people’s spirits even when they are no longer here physically.

“In a school production I did at Portsmouth Grammar School I was the mum in A Monster Calls and it was so beautiful but so tiring having to put myself through what people with cancer have to go through. There's so much depth to it. It was lovely to do.”