Christopher Donahue - Biography

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 1980's, 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 bartenders 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.