Donna M Donnangelo (1961-2007) *45

I was younger than seven but I first really knew Donna. By 5th grade we met in chorus and she was a rarity in that aside from the hard work she put into training herself, she was born with talent. Both as a singer and an actress. The general public simply doesn;t see the rarity in this: There are about four working singers with talent and wsix actors. The rest are pretty and trained.

I was the male theatrical counterpart to her in our small upstate New York town so until we graduated we performed with each other a great deal, including a concert the two of us produced together to raise money for a journey to the All-American chorus for which we'd both been accepted but our half of the bill was stil expensive. We did a compilation of art songs, theatre music and pop music; I wrote the orchestrations and rehearsed the musicians and donna staged it. Donna's Dad designed and a group created a set. Donna and I were both drawn to songs that required acting.Faure, Sondheim, Bernstein, rupert Holmes, Owscar Hammerstein, cole Porter, Stephen Schwartz.

I think Donna knew it- the last time I saw her face to face was about 1997; she came to Boston with Andy and four of her five kids. Our kids played together, we went night swimmingin the pool and played flash;light tag and of cfourse ended up around the piano. I sang a song I'd recently written about friends from grade school and high school and how we lost touch with them, yet they still caused us to bewho we are. And that was Donna. I was a singer and a piano player and it was only through her insistence that I got involved in acting. Wwe began with scenes from Neil Simon and worked our way up to drunken Edward Albee. Donna sat with me for hours as I pondered suicide in Hamlet's "To be or not to be."

"No!" she would say, "You've been hurt before. Think about breaking up- I've SEEN you cry. now look at the page and tell me what it means to you."

I did.

"Now say what you mean but use his words."

To be or not to be; that is the question.

She didn;t smile or applaud; she sat on a desk with her knees tuked beneath her chin and tears slid from the corners of her eyes.

We took our work to a copetition at one of the SUNY'S and did very well. Donna got into a prestigious acting workshop with John Houseman and I got into acting for singers. That's okay.

that was the same year that Donna showed me the score to Bernstein's "Glitter And Be Gay". I think she was shocked to see a vocal line that include so many high Eb's. I don;t know if Donna ever did that piece, but I did "Candide twicve and taught that piece to three young women- one my own daughter.I thought of donna each time: Meghan, Mahri,

Alishmo. i knew that Donna would;ve wailed on it- she;d have caught the comic nuance.

Donna taught me that it was okay to expose my emotions as an actor because that was what the audience expected and not one of them was thinking it was me they were seeing,

So relax: if you have stuff to hide then blame it on Alan (the character

) and not on you." I She was 18 when she gave me this wisdom. I was 45 the last time I qeoted her on it. I had a 22 year career in music, theatre and composing. I credit Donna for a lot of that. She and I grew ill at the same time and both roller coasted together. Sadly, in 2007, when Donna died, I came home from a 9 month stay in the hospital and everyone watched me as i learned to walk and speak and drive again. I do not act or direct anymore. I cannot write for theatre because that requires a lot of collaboration and I am not well enough to do that. I spend most of my time in bed and I write-prose and poetry. I wrote single songs; thingsa that appeal to me and not to people who have commissioned them or because we changed something slight at the top of Act Two and the song that was there- though we all loved it- no longer worked. Or the hundreds of pieces of choral music I wrote to suit the groups I had.

I wrote two books about my illnesses. I am halfway through a novel. Donna is in all of my work- as much as Julee is and my daughters are but the list isn;t much longer than that.

I have healed myself by maintaing friendships with her children. No one knows how our dealt cards will come out, but I rememerber when Chris went off to war and Donna wrote me, knowing how I loved to "run on" as she put it, and asked me to pen pal him, he and i became fast friends. Now Zach is three mil;es from me. The chaos theory brings forth meaning again and I hope that I can bring solace and comfort to them because they certainly do for me.

I miss Donna terribly and i know of the destruction that dying can leave behind. I often wonder if it would have been easier for my own kids had I died in full in 2007 but such questions aren;t meant to be asked. I mean who am I to ask "Why me?" when I never asked during the good times?

Donna, to quote Sondheim: "Your love will live in me" (repeat voice after voice after voice...)

And so many others. And I'll be here. You should hear me do the shakespeare now (that I'm too old to play it) but it's honest and pure. You would be proud.

And you would be so very proud of your kids. I promise to be around for when they need a friend and not a family member. You'd be proud to know that Chris bought a house about ten miles away from the American Writer Shirley Jackson's home, who shocked us with "The Lottery" but has gone on to become one of the most respected women writers of the 20th century. I'm encouraging Zach to write music and lyrics- he's a natural.

You are with so many of us every single day. I shall bide my time here where I am meant to be, even though most of my tim,e is in bed, an invalid with internet. but sometimes we'll meet up again and this time the music will be remarkable. our eyesd will meet from the Bass section to the Soprano section and you'll make one of your faces, make me laugh and the conductor (Probably Beethoven or Randall Thompson) will stop to give me a dirty look.

Just like the old days.

Dave