Kelly Williams: Actor

As a child, actor Kelly Williams was drawn to the magic and creativity of acting and the opportunity it offered to imaginatively explore different places, minds and settings. The idea of inhabiting other people's realities is still what drives her to act. It's a tough business, but Kelly believes that a strong desire to act is essential to surviving and thriving as a modern actor. When she was starting out, she kept hearing that actors had to be tough and confident, and didn't think that these were qualities that she possessed. When she started working professionally, she sometimes didn't have any work for months, but found that her love of acting pulled her through. Like most successful actors, she had to learn to be resilient and accept frequent rejection as an occupational hazard.

Beasts and Beauties was a challenge for Kelly because she was not used to playing so many roles in a short time. On average, each story is about 15 minutes long, and in that time she had to get into character, get to the essence of the tale, and then be ready to switch focus almost immediately, to play a completely different character. Kelly's roles included Beauty in 'Beauty and the Beast', the stepson in 'The Juniper Tree', a horse and a goat! She says that the most rewarding part of Beasts and Beauties was the ensemble acting. In this production, more than others she had experienced, the actors had to work together very closely and unselfishly, and the success of the performance was a result of all the actors working together cooperatively.

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