By Annie Stewart
A NEWTOWNARDS actress is starring in Legally Blonde at the Grand Opera House this October.
Karen Hawthorne has been in acting for 20 years and has a number of credits under her belt including Titanic Boys (Grand Opera House, Cork Opera House), Beauty-ful in Sleeping Beauty (Waterfront Hall), Katie in Sleepy Hollow (Theatre at the Mill) and The Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Millenium Forum).
She’s now taking on her ‘hardest role ever’ as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical, which is an all-singing, all-dancing romantic comedy.
The story follows Elle as she tackles Harvard Law School after her boyfriend dumps her, and she embarks on a plan to get him back.
Karen said Legally Blonde is a massive show and her ‘hardest role’ to date.
“You have no idea how scared I am, it’s a massive show. We did Evita last year all about Eva Perón, and I thought ‘this is huge, this is the hardest part I’ll ever play’. Wrong.
“Elle was so hard, it’s non stop. If there’s a scene I’m not in it’s because I’m getting changed. You’ve maybe half a minute where I’m not on stage, it’s absolutely insane. It’s really intense. “All the music is very big and loud, you have to be able to dance, you have to be able to sing, it’s everything. It’s crazy.”
Rehearsals for the show have been intense with three sessions a week including nine hours on a Sunday.
“We started in May for music, and we had a couple of dance rehearsals, but the director was doing the youth project in the opera house, they were doing Sunset Boulevard so he was out for two months, so we really took the summer off,” said Karen.
“We started back in the middle of August and we are rehearsing three times a week and we rehearse for nine hours on a Sunday.
“Our youngest members have literally just finished their GCSEs; they’re 16 or 17 so they’ve school, and there’s ones at uni and some with jobs, so it’s fitting everything around. It’s nuts.”
Growing up locally, Karen has a soft spot for the Grand Opera House and really enjoys doing productions there.
“Yes, we love the Grand Opera House. My first show, when I was 18, was in the Opera House and they’d just renovated the space.
“We’ve been in there so long, you know the staff, the front of house staff, everybody knows the crew. So when you go in it’s like seeing all your friends, it’s such a friendly space. “Because there’s other companies in Belfast that use the space, you find that the audiences are all the same as well because everyone supports each other. It’s lovely.”
Karen worked professionally after she completed her training before leaving it to work in a school in a special needs setting before getting the acting itch again. She advises any budding actors or actresses to ‘start at the bottom’.
“Learn from the bottom, learn from the ensemble and learn from the people around you. Be on time and just get into as many things as you can.
“We started dancing in school, they brought in a dance teacher because no-one wanted to do netball or hockey. And the dance teacher was part of Bangor Operatic Company; they were doing a youth show and she was the one who said, ‘do you want to come and join?’
“And then when we went there, there was a guy there called Les and he said Bangor Operatic needed dancers and from there I went to a company called New Lyric. After I studied I started working professionally as an actor, then I gave it up and went to work in the school. Then five or six years ago, I decided to go back. Every year I do the panto in the Millennium Forum up in Derry. It’s a balancing act.
“I worked for a long time, one-to-one in a school for six or seven years [with someone who had] ADHD; I was diagnosed with ADHD this year, and he’s really the reason I figured it out.
“This year has been nuts, it’s the first year I’ve been medicated for it. So being on stage, being medicated my brain works a completely different way on it, so it’s been nuts.”
Legally Blonde opens on October 8, to get tickets, go to the Grand Opera House’ website.
