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“I wanted to scare myself,” says Hannah Gaffney, of moving away from her small town in her native Wisconsin. She looked at all the usual cities actors land, but none spoke to her until she visited Philadelphia. “There’s a vibrant theater scene here, not just in the city itself, but throughout the area,” she says. “I fell in love with the history, too.”
She made a splash in her West Chester debut with the Resident Theater Company’s production of Spamalot! as The Lady of the Lake. “It’s my favorite part of all time,” Hanna says. Along with her work with RTC, Hanna’s appeared onstage in Philadelphia, Bristol, Media, and down the shore in Somers Point, NJ. “‘Down-a-shore’ was a new phrase for me,” she says.
Along with acting, singing, and dialect coaching, Hanna’s also a talented makeup artist. She loved teaching the techniques of special effects makeup at the Chester County Art Association this summer. “The students love it,” Hanna says. “It’s all blood, guts, and gore—and when you can get middle-schoolers to say it’s cool, that’s something.”
Hanna enjoys her breaks from work too. “This is a great town to walk around in. You can grab some coffee and be in a park in five minutes. It’s so friendly and beautiful,” Hanna says. “And it’s a lovely place to work as an artist. There’s always something exciting going on, and I want to be here for it.”
