We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hanna Kemp a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hanna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
The mission being: proving that it’s possible to stay true to yourself even in the entertainment industry, and that enough resilience will almost always result in a success.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I seem to have always been good at keeping perspective on what matters in life, and from an early age, I somehow took note of how the biggest regrets of those on their deathbeds were not going after those lofty adventures that seemed unlikely. Maybe it was through watching so many movies as a child, good ones, that is, that centered around the fact that good memories and relationships were what always mattered most. Adventure movies made me crave adventure, as they’re meant to. I wondered for a while why the people in those movies were able to have such adventures, like going to other worlds and seeing beautiful places and using magic. Then, I learned that they were actors. The concept of acting – learning that these people were only pretending – didn’t diminish my belief in adventure. It just meant that from then on, I wouldn’t stop until I was an actor too, because it was then that I decided that being an actor is the closest thing to experiencing magic that exists. Once I voiced this decision as a child, I was constantly reminded about what an unstable path it would be. My family always believed in my talent, but warned me not to expect the rest of the world to do the same. I was homeschooled all through school in the middle of Georgia, along with my three brothers. I was the third child and only girl. The way we stayed social during childhood was through church, playing with the neighborhood kids, and finally, my mom indulged my newfound craving for performance and signed me up for a kids theater summer camp. My mom told me the basics of what to expect when I’d go audition for my first role there (it was a musical) like how to be bugger and animated, and I quickly figured out how to closely imitate the sing-along CD. When shy, homeschooled, 9 year old Hanna showed up to this camp with 40+ kids and wound up landing the lead role I had auditioned for…there was no going back. I took it very seriously – maybe far too seriously for a kid at a kids camp, but I practiced 24/7 and wanted to be as professional as possible and any bit of direction I was given, I absolutely soaked it up. Nothing made me as excited as this concept of being a different character did. The funny thing is, 12 years later, still nothing has made me as excited. It was the amount of passion I felt from that point on that made me confident that I could handle whatever it takes to be an actor – cause I’d be willing to always get better. I wound up getting heavily involved in a community theater and wound up dragging the rest of my family into it from time to time, as well. I was starstruck by my director at the time because he was known as the guy who was hard on everyone, strived for perfection, and never settled. He didn’t just direct shows, he taught us how to perform and work hard. Fast forward to now, I am on the board of governors at that theater and have directed 4 of the most intricate projects the theater has put on! Each of them, I could go on rants about the adventure in itself and the trials we overcame, but long story short, we never took the easy route. I had to learn how to be in charge of casts of 45 people and take up a very adult leadership position very fast. At the same time, the most prominent people in my life, the closest in my life, I’ve met through my journey at this place. At the same time, I’ve gotten involved in a film acting studio in Atlanta – been taking classes with them since 2018 – and I’ve added a local feature film, several paid short films, a voice acting gig, background work for fun, and landed the leading lady in a six minute commercial that totally fit my childhood dream role (a medieval maiden). All of these roles were acquired somehow or another without the help of an agency,l. But getting a good agent would be the next step. That’s my general backstory :)
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I always anticipated needing lots of resilience since the acting industry is notorious for rejecting you almost constantly until you get a big break. But, ironically, it’s been my directing journey in which my resilience has been tested the most. When I jumped into the role of director, I was only 18 and, though confident in my theatre abilities, was terrified of disappointing the board of governors (and, frankly, of trying new things). It took some resilience to even get through my initial proposal and begin resolving conflict in the adult world, but that was only the beginning. This first show I was directing was A Christmas Carol and over 100 people came to audition at our little theater. I wound up casting around 45 people – adults, teens, and children alike. This was also around the height around COVID. The music director I recruited for my artistic team turned out to be…unreliable. I wound up teaching myself how to music direct on my own (I had taken piano lessons for 12 years, but never felt comfortable in my sight reading abilities) on top of my other duties, and since also having previous choreography experience, I wound up doing that job as well. I also had rather lofty plans for our set design – wanting to add a steampunk element and build a giant clock wall with a bridge – and a giant horror puppet on stilts – and yet my budget was $0…for this particular show. So, I was constantly on the search for people/businesses to help sponsor the show. (To our relief, we gathered enough sponsors to cover the cost of the entire production. But it wasn’t easy.) The main test of resilience, however, came during the long-awaited performances. Someone caught COVID. Despite our precautions, someone tested positive and told their friends. One thing lead to another, and by the second performance, several key people were missing from our cast with no understudies. Even the smallest character being gone would throw a wrench in the whole thing, because it was one big machine, and every person was a cog in a wheel. What would normally be a simple directing project, was definitely a 24/7 job instead. Every morning, I’d wake up to several text messages from parents or crewmates telling me they couldn’t show up, or that someone got injured, or that they’d lost a prop – I can’t even remember details, but there was always something that I had to repair in the nick of time. Problem solving was the name of the game, and we could’ve cancelled the show many times due to our inconveniences. In fact, we finally had to. Before our second weekend of performances, there were so many people missing (which had lead to me re-casting, double-casting, triple-casting, and jumping in the show, myself) that we were forced to cancel what we had worked so hard on. But I wasn’t willing to let down my cast of 45 people, or myself, who had dedicated and volunteered so much time and energy into making it an amazing production. So, I had to contact every cast member a month later to see if they were interested in doing it again in January after the COVID cases had passed. Some could, some couldn’t, which meant I had even more ere-casting to do, last minute. But it happened. We sold out every show. That took a lot of resilience. But, that was only the beginning of my building reputation for staying resilient when trying to maintain the highest quality possible. Each show after that came with its own equal amount of obstacles. The next one I would set out to do was The Play That Goes Wrong, which I was ecstatic to find that the rights had just become available for. However, when we applied to buy those rights, we were denied without an explanation. Instead of choosing a different show, I dug a little deeper. This was the only comedy I was passionate about, and I didn’t want to direct something that didn’t have passion behind it. I contacted several different companies that were connected to that show and the rights, as well as the authors and star of said show in attempt to find out why we had been denied the rights. We were told that it was because a professional theater near us had already bought the rights, and it’s against the rules for a non-profit theater to perform at the same time. I didn’t find any evidence of this being true, however, so I kept digging. The author and lead of the show, Henry Shields, wound up replying to me. I never thought in a million years that he actually would. He put me in touch with his personal agent in order to help solve the problem or make an exception. It took some detective work, but alas, we discovered that it was another non-profit theater from a neighboring town that had CLAIMED to be professional that was preventing us from access. This happened within the span of a couple months, and time was ticking. We needed to announce the auditions for whatever show I was going to direct in this time slot, and I had nothing. So…I wound up WRITING a parody of The Play That Goes Wrong in that span of two months in order to ensure I still had an acceptable quality show to put on. It was risky, and almost impossible with the time crunch – not to mention…who would come audition for a parody that no one had heard of before? The answer: Just the right amount. Where my previous show had 100 people show up, this one only had about 12 people show up. But, those 12 people trusted me enough to audition for this mystery production. After actually CASTING this show…without even completing the writing…we were FINALLY granted access to the real version of The Play That Goes Wrong. Great timing, right? *massive eyeroll* I then had to RE-CAST this show using the actors I had already chosen. Another risky decision.
Along with the fact that the set was the most technically elaborate we have ever come across with absolutely no instructions how to build it and the fact that the rights company failed to send us ANY scripts until opening night (forcing us to download an incorrect version from online), it wound up being referred to as the funniest and highest quality play the theater had ever put on. It is my absolute favorite to this day. It would not have happened without resilience, not just from me, but from my entire team.
The final test of resilience that comes to mind is in the following production, but I’ll try to stay more general. This was by far the hardest project I have ever embarked on in my life : The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Following the pattern of shooting for lofty heights for our community theater, we planned to have a 12 foot tall lion puppet, a choreographed battle scene, a custom-made soundtrack for the entire show, amongst other special effects…we, of course, were only given 3 weeks in-theater to accomplish all of this. Needless to say, I spent countless, sleepless nights either programming lights with my tech buddy, choreographing 15 individual fight sequences that intertwined with each other, writing music for each scene with my music editor, or something of that ilk. The amount of work, drama, and obstacles that came with that time crunch, changed me as a person. When you’re resilient, you gain so much confidence in future projects. So…now I feel like I can do anything!
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
The Chronicles of Narnia series was the main piece of literature that affected my development. Not only are they great entertainment for all ages, but they were full of examples of character development. I think growing up with such examples, I was subconsciously teaching myself how to look at life. I think it helped me to skip out on the “before” and jump to the “after” much quicker, if you know what I mean. But that was just for my general growing up. In my adult life, I found that the film About Time was the most impactful thing I’ve seen that sticks with me pretty much everyday. It has a bit of everything; drama, comedy, romance, etc. But, it’s the ending, the part where the moral of the story is revealed more clearly, that sticks with me. It’s basically about a man in the modern world who learns that he has the genetically inherited ability to time travel. He uses it occasionally to attempt to twist the outcomes in his life – sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But, at the end, he decides to live life with a certain strategy. He lives everyday twice. He goes through a day once as normal – rushing around getting things done, as per usual. But, then he does it all again, this time intentionally taking the time to notice the little things he may have missed the first time, and appreciate the good parts more. He did this for a few years, and finally made the decision to never use his power again. Instead, with this practice, he would just live each day, already knowing to appreciate those little things and keep perspective on what matters most. He found that that was the most valuable way to live life, and I’ve wound up thinking about it ever since. So, though I’ve had this dream of becoming an actor nearly my whole life, and I’ve learned to have resilience to make it happen, I know I’ll never sacrifice any of my values or loved ones to get there. I’ll always appreciate the little things more.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/hanna_with_no_xtra_h?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008764847004&mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Other: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm11250312/
Image Credits
– Phillip Wheeler with Rectify Film – Jessica Whitley Photography – Alex Majher – Casey Nelson