Hannah Donaldson never expected to be playing one of the most coveted classical parts written for a young actress this side of Juliet. Especially not for her first professional role since leaving drama school. Yet when this perkily confident 23 year old steps onto The Tron stage this week as Antigone, the feisty firebrand seeking to avenge her murdered brother in David Levin’s new version of Sophocles’ tragedy, it will be the culmination of a decision taken months ago. Then, along with her student contemporaries, Donaldson was preparing for college productions, including a knock-em-dead turn in verbatim drama, Talking To Terrorists. Now, she’s been thrown squarely in the deep end.
“It’s so intense”, says Donaldson. “I’m only in three scenes, but they’re pitched at such a level that you’ve just got to jump straight in without thinking about it too much. I struggled a bit to make those emotions feel realistic to me, because obviously I’ve not experienced anything that extreme. But Antigone is extremely strong-willed, and very mature for her age. We’ve really been trying to get away from any self-pity that sometimes leaps off the page at me, but is boring to watch, and less interesting as a character. Here she’s more calm and collected about things, and knows this is something she just has to do. She’s terrified and knows she’s going to die, but is adamant, and it’s as if she’s sitting on something that’s about to explode. Then at the end you see she’s a helpless little girl, completely out of her depth.”
The same couldn’t be said for Donaldson, who was put through the mill by Levin from the off. Preferring to avoid the traditional audition treadmill in favour of a more personally engaged line of inquiry, Levin recognised in Donaldson an indefinable energy he thought she could bring to Antigone. Given that he’d never seen her act or even heard her read until day one of rehearsals after she was cast, it was a risk.
“David wanted someone with little or no experience,” Donaldson says of the process. “He would ask things you might not expect from someone the first time you meet them, but just to see how I instinctively reacted. I suppose he was looking for someone who was honest, open and ambitious to do good work.”
“There was,” says Levin of Donaldson, “a daring. I knew if I said jump, she would jump.”
Growing up in Newport-on-Tay near Dundee, Donaldson discovered drama via youth theatre in Newport. Only after a summer course in Glenrothes with Scottish Youth Theatre did it occur to her that she could actually make a living from something up to that point she’d seen as extra-curricular fun. A foundation course in Dundee led to RSAMD before being thrust into the real world.
Once her stint at The Tron is done and dusted, Donaldson will barely have time to pause for breath before decamping to Dundee Rep, where she joins the theatre’s regular acting ensemble as part of their one year graduate trainee scheme. Given that it was the thrill of visiting The Rep ‘s Christmas shows when younger which first inspired Donaldson to want to be actress, her first turn in this year’s Christmas show looks set to be something of a rites of passage. In the meantime, though, there’s Antigone to deal with.
“She’s someone who puts herself in the most horrific places on the strength of belief alone,” Donaldson says of her character. “To believe in something so whole-heartedly, you’ve got to admire that.”
Antigone, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Oct 27
www.tron.co.uk
The Herald, October 11th 2007
ends
“It’s so intense”, says Donaldson. “I’m only in three scenes, but they’re pitched at such a level that you’ve just got to jump straight in without thinking about it too much. I struggled a bit to make those emotions feel realistic to me, because obviously I’ve not experienced anything that extreme. But Antigone is extremely strong-willed, and very mature for her age. We’ve really been trying to get away from any self-pity that sometimes leaps off the page at me, but is boring to watch, and less interesting as a character. Here she’s more calm and collected about things, and knows this is something she just has to do. She’s terrified and knows she’s going to die, but is adamant, and it’s as if she’s sitting on something that’s about to explode. Then at the end you see she’s a helpless little girl, completely out of her depth.”
The same couldn’t be said for Donaldson, who was put through the mill by Levin from the off. Preferring to avoid the traditional audition treadmill in favour of a more personally engaged line of inquiry, Levin recognised in Donaldson an indefinable energy he thought she could bring to Antigone. Given that he’d never seen her act or even heard her read until day one of rehearsals after she was cast, it was a risk.
“David wanted someone with little or no experience,” Donaldson says of the process. “He would ask things you might not expect from someone the first time you meet them, but just to see how I instinctively reacted. I suppose he was looking for someone who was honest, open and ambitious to do good work.”
“There was,” says Levin of Donaldson, “a daring. I knew if I said jump, she would jump.”
Growing up in Newport-on-Tay near Dundee, Donaldson discovered drama via youth theatre in Newport. Only after a summer course in Glenrothes with Scottish Youth Theatre did it occur to her that she could actually make a living from something up to that point she’d seen as extra-curricular fun. A foundation course in Dundee led to RSAMD before being thrust into the real world.
Once her stint at The Tron is done and dusted, Donaldson will barely have time to pause for breath before decamping to Dundee Rep, where she joins the theatre’s regular acting ensemble as part of their one year graduate trainee scheme. Given that it was the thrill of visiting The Rep ‘s Christmas shows when younger which first inspired Donaldson to want to be actress, her first turn in this year’s Christmas show looks set to be something of a rites of passage. In the meantime, though, there’s Antigone to deal with.
“She’s someone who puts herself in the most horrific places on the strength of belief alone,” Donaldson says of her character. “To believe in something so whole-heartedly, you’ve got to admire that.”
Antigone, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Oct 27
www.tron.co.uk
The Herald, October 11th 2007
ends
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