Christopher Donahue(I)
- Actor
Christopher is mostly a stage actor. He was born in
Washington D.C. and raised in North Andover, Massachusetts. He is a
lapsed Irish catholic and one of six children. He attended the
prestigious Phillips Academy, Andover, graduating in 1981, and then
continued his education at Northwestern University where, after nearly
ten years of not trying very hard, he finally earned a Bachelor's
Degree in the Science of Speech. During the 1980s, when he was not
attending college, he was slowly becoming an actor in Chicago. In 1989,
he became part of Mary Zimmerman's stable of actors and created roles
in many of her productions in Chicago and beyond--most notably The
Arabian Nights, The Journey to the West, and The Odyssey. He also
appeared in many shows at other Chicago theatres, including the
Goodman, Court, and Lookingglass. For reasons that are still not clear
to him, he headed east to the New York City area in 1998, eventually
settling in Princeton, NJ. He was very lucky in his first couple of
years in NYC, appearing in the off-Broadway productions of Dogeaters
(Public Theatre) and Measure for Measure (in Central Park), as well as
on Broadway in Metamorphoses. He also created the role of The Creature
in Neal Bell's "Monster" at Classic Stage Company, for which he
received an Obie. He has appeared as a bartender in the films "The Big
Kahuna" and "Since You've Been Gone", played a very unsexy police
officer on "All My Children", and went down for manslaughter (because
of a scuffle over an orange) on "Law and Order". From 2010-2011, he
worked as a janitor, cleaning dormitories at Champlain College in
Burlington, Vermont. He regards this as one of the happiest times of
his life. He returned to acting, as well as Princeton, in the summer of
2011. Realizing he was not much of a Player, he fled New York and
returned to Chicago in 2013, and started breathing again. He appeared
in the world premiere of "Still Alice" at Lookingglass Theatre, and
will reprise his role as Scrooge in the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre's
production of "A Christmas Carol". In 2014, he is slated to appear in
"The Tempest", co-directed by Aaron Posner and Teller (from Penn and
Teller). He greatly enjoys being an actor, but he likes to draw
pictures as well.
