I’m very excited. This has been a very good week. I landed a neat role in a short animated film, and now I’ve been cast in the plum role of Gidger in the first New York revival of Richard Greenberg’s fascinating play, The Violet Hour! It’s being produced by the Active Theater here in NYC this March. I play a publisher’s assistant, an extremely well-educated man who is having a midlife crisis of epic proportions. He is emotionally on the edge, terrified he will live and die without making his mark on the world. Gidger is outspoken, sometimes shockingly so, and also extremely funny. He’s one of those people who holds nothing back, and has an impressive vocabulary with which to express his intense emotions. The play is slightly fantastical, and full of surprises–including a printing machine that outputs potentially life-changing information!
I had a great time at the auditions held by casting director Cindi Rush and Artistic Director/Director Nathaniel Shaw. My thanks to them both for creating such a great audition atmosphere, and for inviting me to audition in the first place. And of course my thanks to my agent, Reneé Glicker at About Artists, for submitting me. I learned after the auditions that Nathaniel has an impressive resumé, including three years as a featured dancer with the magnificent Paul Taylor Dance Company. PTDC happens to be my favorite dance company in the world, so I took this as a great bit of serendipity. I know how hard the PTDC dancers work, and the remarkable quality of their performances. One of the best directors I’ve worked with to date, Sara Lampert Hoover, was also a modern dancer. Nathaniel was gracious, insightful, and a lot of fun at the auditions, so I can’t wait to start rehearsals on February 13th!
The Active Theater’s production of The Violet Hour will play March 9-25 in NYC. I will post more information as soon as I have it. You can also click the logo on this post to visit their web site and see a full calendar of performance dates. If you’re going to be in NYC, I hope you’ll come to one of our performances and say hello afterwards. This is a very funny and thought-provoking play that deserves a big audience. And in fact, the March 9th performance is already sold out! Stay tuned for more information.