THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Donna began her undergraduate education at San Jose State and landed her first theatre job doing hair and makeup for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. "It was the year O.S.F. started its first indoor season with the opening of the Angus Bowmer Theatre. That really launched me into theatre," she recalls. Since then, with a break of several years when her only public appearances were playing 30's blues and 40's swing with a jug band, she returned to university, this time to complete a BA at North Montana College (now N.M.U.) in Havre, Montana, then back to San Jose for a Fine Arts MA in acting. Armed with a graduate degree and a lot of enthusiasm, Donna moved out to design and act for stage companies up and down the West Coast, including Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, San Jose Stage, San Jose Repertory and A.C.T. in San Francisco. "But I still take time off once or twice a year to play with that same jug band," she says. "They're what helped me keep a hand in performance when I was out of theatre for ten years.

THE GOOD WAR

"One of my grad school classmates at San Jose was Jon Selover, who's now artistic director at Western Stage. After taking my MA, I followed Jon to Salinas in 1985....Another wonderful part of my time at San Jose State was making friends with a fellow student named Paul Myrvold. To my delight, we finally worked together again when he came to Western Stage to play Don Quixote in MAN OF LA MANCHA. It was the realization of a shared dream...What's kept me at Western Stage is a variety of things. It's a place where I was given wonderful roles like Rose in GYPSY and Lola in COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA and Mrs Anntrobus in SKIN OF OUR TEETH. But beyond that, I've had the experience of directing the Young Company, a summer theatre program for local kids. Last year we did a show called THE CURATE SHAKESPEARE "AS YOU LIKE IT," all about some players gathering to put on AS YOU LIKE IT and then the audience doesn't show up! It's one of several wonderful Young Company pieces I've been able to work on in the past three years.

SKIN OF OUR TEETH

"From time to time, I do workshops to teach people how to apply stage makeup, though, sad to say, that used to happen more often than it does now." Less often now because of cuts in arts funding. Donna remains with the Western Stage, but these days, as with many other TWS staff, it's six months of the year in Salinas, six months somewhere else, in Donna's case, at home with her mother in Springfield, Oregon.

Cuts or no cuts, her enthusiasm and delight in theatre remain undampened. "I love to make people laugh, and I love to make them cry . . . There's something about the sharing of energy between the live actor and an audience that you don't get anywhere else but in live performance. The emotions have a special intensity - and you can be more abstract and poetic, less realistic, on stage...In this time of budget crises and economic blues, I think it's more important than ever that we realize the vitality of the arts. They elevate mankind by reminding us that life boils down to a lot more than just how much you can buy and sell. Yet the sad thing is that art is the first thing we decide to cut from the life of our schools and our communities.

"Working at Western Stage has given me the privilege of forming close links with members of the local community. I've seen the confidence and teamwork and energy generated in doing a play turn kids who might have been considered ‘at risk’ into wonderful citizens of society and the world."