TYC Cast: Danielle Barnum
We're a month away from our screening! Monday October 24, 7pm screening at The grand Cinema in Tacoma! More details here
And now, here's another introduction to one of the wonderful women who make up our all-female cast of Tell Your Children.
Danielle Barnum
The 5 women actors in this project are playing characters from or inspired by fairy tales and myths. But in one of the films, they are also playing members of a family-- 4 sisters and a mother, navigating a season of suspended grief. In the short film, "Threadbare," directed by Wonder Russell, each sister is linked with a season. In our story, Spring is "the silent one," physically suspended in animation, yet a part of her is wandering and waiting for the right time to come home. Also in our story, Spring is a dancer.
Throughout this project, I am so grateful for the people who have signed on, and humbled by the rightness of the cast we assembled, as evidenced here in Danielle.
Autumn, Summer, Winter, Spring
Superficially, we brought together a cast that actually believably resembles a family--grey eyes, high cheekbones, check and check. Practically, we found the right actor for the character and story needs-- a dancer. And as a bonus, we also managed to bring together a group of women whose collective heart, imagination, and intellect were engaged right from the start, ready to jump into an experimental project--a grey-eyed dancer excited to create a character and her story, with no character description but a single line from a poem, no script but the one we were making up with narrative and emotional beats.
Danielle's day was split in two radically different parts on filming day. She spent the first half of the day completely immobile in a hospital bed while the lights, camera, and action moved around her.
Photo by Kat St John Photography
Then, we packed up, released the other actors, and moved to a different room, which our set decoration team had spent hours transforming into a fantastical, displaced forest. Danielle then spent the rest of her day dancing hard, re-performing over and over a routine she had choreographed, with beats discussed previously with the director, and by graciously continuing with some "let's try this" scenarios from Wonder and Alisa, our Director of Photography. (Trivia: Music playing on set was "Work Song" and "Like Real People Do," by Hozier)
I'm so excited for you to see the beautiful moments she found and nurtured, the magical overlaid on the clinical, and the rich inner life Danielle brings to this silent sister through her craft.
The Official Bio: Danielle Barnum is one part performer, one part photographer in the Seattle area. She has been involved in various TV/film work, including TnT's 'Leverage' and ZOE'S 'JourneyQuest', and commercial work with Microsoft and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Most frequently, she has been a part of musical productions/workshops with the 5th Avenue, Village, and Showtunes Theatres. When not performing, she is a full-time photographer of people at www.inspirebydanielle.com
