As Mimi Madden McDonald ready to audition for her elementary college’s third-grade expertise present a few years in the past, the trainer in cost requested what her expertise was.
“Speaking!” she introduced blithely.
Although fully unaware at that second, McDonald had simply recognized the trait that may carry her by way of an extended and satisfying profession in performing and theater administration.
For many years, the articulate and energetic lady has been the managing director of Key West’s acclaimed Crimson Barn Theatre — a theater she and her husband Gary helped set up with colleagues, together with Pleasure Hawkins and Richard Magesis. She’s additionally vice chairman of the theater’s guiding board.
McDonald earned a theater diploma at Virginia Commonwealth College in Richmond, then studied dance with the famend Twyla Tharp at American College. She then headed for Key West, the place faculty associates Rita and Roddy Brown had based the Greene Avenue Theater.
“The troupe that got here from Richmond determined it was an entire lot extra enjoyable to start out a theater in paradise than it was to beat the streets of New York Metropolis for jobs, with all of the competitors up there,” stated McDonald. “Our impetus was to return down and begin knowledgeable theater, as a result of we have been within the craft — and operating reveals for longer durations of time, in order that actors may actually settle into a component.”
Within the early years she earned much-needed extra cash as a financial institution teller, which ready her for dealing with theater funds and administration. She additionally choreographed Tennessee Williams’ “Will Mr. Merriwether Return from Memphis?” that launched Key West’s Tennessee Williams Nice Arts Middle on the then-Florida Keys Group School. She and Gary house-sat for Tennessee Williams himself.
On the identical time, the McDonalds helped begin the Crimson Barn Actors Studio, named for the small carriage home that stood behind the Key West Lady’s Membership on Duval Avenue — the constructing that turned the Crimson Barn Theatre and the corporate’s house.
The Barn opened in 1980 and mounted 5 productions throughout its inaugural 1980-81 season. Whereas funds remained tight, the theater founders’ creativity and optimism outweighed any monetary lack.
“It was a lot enjoyable,” McDonald recalled. “It was superb and stimulating, and the sky was the restrict.”
Now, 45 years after its preliminary season, the Crimson Barn is acknowledged as a cultural cornerstone that helped set the stage for the creation of different Key West arts organizations. The theater’s successes have included a long-ago manufacturing of the musical comedy “Nunsense” that also evokes reward, the American premiere of playwright Hy Conrad’s COVID-era farce “Quarantine For Two,” the biannual and much-loved “Brief Consideration Span Theatre” reveals, and thought-provoking choices like “The Code” and “Lifespan of a Truth.”
Guiding the Barn’s productions and progress is a household affair for McDonald. Gary, her husband of some 50 years, is the longtime technical director — now stepping again and turning over some duties to their son Jack, who has assisted behind the scenes since childhood. Their daughter Amber additionally embraced a theatrical profession, performing in New York and Los Angeles earlier than returning to the Keys and the stage the place she grew up.
Whereas devoting most of her skilled life to the Crimson Barn, McDonald can also be the hard-working producer of the Masquerade March and different occasions for Key West’s annual Fantasy Fest celebration She choreographed Key West Excessive Faculty choral productions for 20 years and directed younger actors in native Keys Children reveals for 10 years.
Directing has turn out to be her major ardour.
“I’d a lot relatively direct than act proper now,” McDonald stated. “With performing, you’re studying a script and doing what the director tells you to do — however directing, I felt limitless.”
Her newest directorial triumph was “Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B,” an irreverent mystery-comedy that reimagines famed sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson as an eccentric feminine duo. Debuting in January 2025, it earned stellar critiques and helped McDonald stretch her expertise in new methods.
“It pulled out components of me that I didn’t know I had,” she admitted. “I discovered it actually liberating and refreshing and enjoyable — that’s what occurs when you might have a very good solid that may interpret what you’re saying.”
She is going to subsequent direct the Crimson Barn’s 2025 vacation play, “Scrooge MacBeth,” described as an off-kilter mashup of Christmas and William Shakespeare.
When she’s not concerned in theater work or exploring her creativity, McDonald spends time cooking, recharging her batteries on the household’s inherited hardwood tree farm in West Virginia, and having fun with the Key West group.
“It’s unique and exquisite and colourful on a regular basis,” she summed up, displaying her still-keen expertise for speaking. “It’s a really particular place the place we’re all related to one another, and all of us share the exceptional historical past of this loopy island.”