#acting-restraint

#acting-restraint

MarcAurele knew he had to strike while the iron was red-hot, so he got to writing, and in just three short weeks he was bringing the show to life, complete with a number that explored the inherent musicality of that bike scene and another that featured a chorus lauding 'gay hockey players with big butts' as if they were singing a church hymn.

Under the ABS challenge system, a team begins each game with two challenges. If a player gets an umpire's call overturned, their team retains the challenge. In effect, this means a team has unlimited challenges until they get two wrong.

I started in stand-up because it felt like the most direct way to connect with people. There's no filter. You go on stage, and you find out very quickly if something works. That shaped everything for me. It forced me to be honest. If you're not honest, the audience knows. That idea still drives how I work today.

The thing is an almost-four-hour-long continuous explosion - actors dancing, grappling, and hurling furniture; the director present onstage ripping pieces out of the set; paint and blood and flowers and feathers everywhere.

The production that just opened at OSF, directed by Marcela Lorca, is the best I have seen. Working with a strong cast and a spectacular movement and design team, this production crackles with vitality and originality.

I landed Oct. 5, and we started work Oct. 6, so it was like jump straight in. And when it's your day off, it's like, 'OK, I just need to shop and clean and relax.' Nearly six months in, the actor is slowly familiarizing himself with New York neighborhood by neighborhood, including the West Village, which he says he recently explored with his girlfriend.

John Slattery, 63, moved to an apartment on Bank Street in the West Village after marrying the actress Talia Balsam in 1998. At the time, he had established himself as a character actor.

When Palo Alto Players Artistic Director Patrick Klein learned that a stage version of Dan Brown's 2003 bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code was out in the world, he had to know more. Trekking out to Houston's Alley Theatre last fall for their production provided clarity, leading to his own company's regional Bay Area premiere. How can this dense novel become something to see on stage?

Worries, fears, hang-ups, and desires are translated through highly skilled puppetry, as interview scenes cast puppet couples talking about their sex lives. Written by Mark Down of Blind Summit, a cohort of exceptional makers and puppeteers expanding the definition of a puppet, this collaboration with the UK's National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles pulls from real-life conversations to get puppets talking dirty.

When a stranger smiles at you, you smile back. That is why, when Sir Ian McKellen ( The Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Amadeus) walked on the stage in front of me, looked me straight in the eye, and smiled at me, I smiled back. It was the polite thing to do. It was also completely unnecessary, because McKellen was not actually on the stage in front of me. He smiled at me through a pair of special glasses.