The Madras College Archive
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The Madras College Archive |
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Former Pupil Biographies Ronald Eaglesham Porter (1956 - current) (Stage name Ron Donachie)
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Throughout the 1980s, he was a prolific theatre performer all across the United Kingdom, working in Britain's now largely vanished repertory system. This afforded him the opportunity to act in many classical plays which are now rarely performed due to budget constraints and closed theatres. During this period, he appeared in over twenty plays at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre under its famous triumvirate of Giles Havergal, Robert David Macdonald and Phillip Prowse. Like many performers with similar experience, he considers this the happiest, most fruitful and most influential phase of his career. In the 1990s, he became a regular performer on British television, and did not appear on stage again until unexpectedly asked to join the National Theatre company for "Scenes From the Big Picture" in 2003. This ended a gap in live performance of thirteen years. Since then, he has tried to return to the variety of his earlier years with regular live performances interspersing his television and film work. Married on St. Patrick's Day 1989 to Fiona Biggar, the couple have two children: Naomi Porter, a student of Russian, German and French, and Daniel Porter, who now performs in his own right under the name of Daniel Portman. His sister-in-law is the costume designer Trisha Biggar and his brother is the actor Stewart Porter. His extensive lists of work in film, on
television, radio and on the stage can be seen on his Wikipedia page: Ron's acting career began whilst in Madras College and he appeared in school productions of Serjeant Musgrove's Dance (1972), A Man for all Seasons (1973) and the Taming of the Shrew (1974). English teacher Ann Bridges describes events: In Madras I and my first husband directed Ron as Attercliffe in Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance in 1972 when he was in S4, then More in Man for All Seasons in 1973 and finally Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew in 1974. These were all put on in the Byre Theatre in January of the year, running from Tuesday to Saturday with full houses (round about 100). Ron then went on to Glasgow University to study Drama and English. He stayed along with others in the acting line in a flat I had in Glasgow, and in his final year at University (which I think was 1978) we founded a theatre group in St Andrews called Kingdom. It was under this banner that we ran a venue in what was then the Crown Theatre at the Fringe. We produced two plays – one was Black Wedding by my husband Bob Bridges with a professional cast, and the other was Macbeth which was a vehicle for Ron and some of his fellow students, with a few in the cast from S6 at Madras and two gifted amateurs from local drama groups. The idea was to give the students a shop window and to pay them on a cooperative basis so that it might provide a stepping stone to getting an Equity card – which was the main difficulty in the way for young actors then. We managed to pay everyone the magnificent sum of £8 – the running and renting of the venue along with the upkeep of the cast and crew ate up a lot of the money. Incidentally in the same venue we hosted one of a very young Rona Munro’s plays (she was about 18 at the time) and we also hosted a very successful very early show with Rick Mayell and Ade Edmonson entitled Death on the Toilet (in hindsight we should have charge them more rent!) Ron, of course, played Macbeth – with considerable authority. I don’t know whether the £8 ever swung anything, but quite soon after that Ron got his first truly professional gig in a show - about miners, I think.
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