An unforgettable performance...

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There are rare occasions when I feel driven to write the blog about an individual and this is one of them…one of my most nervous hours of being a director was spent last night at The Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal in anticipation of Hannah’s performance of Karamazoo. Indeed a number of times Danny and I compared notes on just how sick we felt with nerves…We weren’t nervous because we didn’t think she could do it because we knew she could. I realized I was nervous because I had been responsible for giving her the most enormous challenge and she had to go out in front of a full house of about 300 people and meet it…don’t know why I bothered though…being nervous that is…she was truly inspiring…from the outset she had the audience absolutely with her…and she held them for the entirety of the performance. This performance was fuelled by integrity, truth, understanding and was realized through an intelligent, thoughtful approach to telling the story of a character who’s story needed to be told...

Hannah deserves so much credit for many things but I think maybe these are the things I appreciated the most: her responsiveness to direction, anything she was given she took on board and incorporated into what she did…there was no ego, no arrogance and most importantly no defensiveness… Next up…her desire to do the best that she could do and to that end she was prepared to graft…to devote time and energy to something that wasn’t easy. Thirdly her gradual development of technique – during the last 4 months, vocally, physically and emotionally she has improved her skills significantly. Finally her measured approach…there were no hysterics…no outbursts just a thoughtful practical attitude that knew what needed to be done and strove towards attaining it…all personal agendas set aside to follow the one agenda that mattered…

Her reward…18 minutes where the only thing that mattered to every person in that theatre was her…her portrayal of a character and situation which heartbreakingly resonates with too many people’s lives in some way…the audience laughed with Ace and at Ace, they were shocked by her and sorry for her and they trusted Hannah utterly to tell her story…she was also rewarded by rapturous appreciation when it was over and a sense of achievement which she will carry with her essentially for all time…Hanna Speke…you are an inspiration…

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