Donna Rae Davidson
decided she wanted to act when Debbie Kenniston got the coveted role in the eighth grade school play. Donna Rae spent the next eight years studying singing, dancing and acting, earning her BA in Theater from Sacramento State University. After completing an exciting actors training course at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Donna Rae turned her attention to directing and went on to earn an MA in directing from Humboldt State University.
Donna Rae was inspired to write her first play, GADS, (Gene Astelle Dance Studio) after seeing a production of Angry Housewives in Seattle, 1985. Based on her experience as a ballroom dance instructor, Donna Rae produced GADS at the Tacoma Little Theater. Hooked on the experience, Donna Rae found her passion in playwriting and has written 18 plays to date. In the late 1980s, she won both the Playwright's and Director's Festival awards at New City Theater for writing her one-act, Stand Up (adapted into a teleplay and produced by PBS Seattle in 1989), and for directing her one-act musical adaptation of Boothe Tarkington's The Trysting Place.
In 1998, Donna Rae won the Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival for her celebratory musical revue of strong women throughout history, Women With Balls. Seattle PI's Susan Paynter praised Donna Rae's story of "unapologetically strong women who bring audiences to their feet, cheering and stamping for more." Later that year Donna Rae met composer Rob Jones and began in earnest her long-term goal of writing full-length musicals. MORE >
