issue 01
december 2020
Scene from the short Abandoned Act (2018)
“Never let people define ‘who’ you are. Never give up. Never let people tell you what you can and can’t do!” —Hawthorne James
Straight out of the windy city of Chicago, IL, Hawthorne James, born James Hawthorne, had an affinity early in life that he was destined to be an actor. Hawthorne would soon attend the same Catholic school as his older and popular siblings did before him. However, by the time he arrived, the nuns were rightfully tired and knew the family very well. Hawthorne eventually would “grace” their stage around the age of five or six in the kindergarten school plays. At first, all he did was run around in circles playing ‘It’, until he realized that somebody was finally paying attention to him. Someone was looking at him! Then, he
knew! He knew that he could run around better than the other children who were running in circles. “I said to myself, I know how to do this. I CAN do this! So, I think it all started there. Then throughout the years, I did another play or two in grade school and later in high school, there was a priest who had done a play and every other year it would be either ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ or ‘Hamlet’. The year I became eligible, which was my tenth-grade year, the play was ‘Hamlet’. I knew I should have been playing Hamlet, but a senior usually gets that role. I also knew during rehearsal I should be playing Hamlet, and I would say to myself, “No, that’s not okay what the actor is doing!”
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