Just before leaving school at 16, Donna decided she might like to take up drama professionally and, after writing to several drama schools, she was given an audition in London with the Central School of Speech and Drama. Following the audition she realised that she still needed a lot more stage experience so she enrolled for a one year creative arts course at Withens Lane College of Further Education. The course involved dance and movement, performance training, mime and stage make-up, but at the end of the year she decided that professional theatre was not what she wanted to do, so she became involved in amateur theatre again when she joined the Limelight Theatre Group, which was part of Wallasey C.V.S.’s Young People’s Group. It was here that she first met Barrie.

Donna was 18 by then and she performed in several one-act plays with the group, which ran for some 18 months under various producers. For the next eight years she concentrated on her career and drama was not a priority, but then, with more free time to spare, she joined the Out and About Theatre Company seven years ago. She has appeared in seven of our productions, one play every year except for 1997 when she rested to undertake a library course. Her two favourite parts were as the panicky Miss Pickhart in Alan Ayckbourn’s delightful comedy 'A Cut In The Rates', where she was nearly cut in half by the wiley Ratchet, and as Vanilla in the spoof Victorian melodrama 'The Cobblers’ Ball'.