Great Trailer For The 39 Steps at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre

I know, I know; the show has already closed!  🙁  But I found that the rehearsals and run were so intense that I didn’t have the time or energy to add as many blog posts as I would have liked.  So, I’m adding them now as time allows!

Here’s a genuinely clever trailer that the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s inventive marketing department created to advertise the show.  It only shows a couple of the characters we each played, but it does give you a great feel for the general tone of silliness that we sustained for 8 shows a week.  It features all four of us performers: me, Christian Pedersen, Beth Hylton, and Joe Foust.  Enjoy!

The 39 Steps Opens Tonight!

It’s all happening so fast!  Here we are at opening night already.  We’ll do a few last-minute tweaks this afternoon, then the performance, and after that a grand party at a local restaurant.  Our preview audiences have been wonderful, and we can’t wait to be officially up and running!  It’s too bad the run is only two weeks, but we’ll enjoy every minute of it.  I play a dozen different roles, and one of my favorites is the chatty and excitable Mrs. McGarrigle, proprietress of the McGarrigle Hotel in the Scottish Highlands.  Here I am as Mrs. M, with Joe Foust as Mr. McGarrigle, welcoming Beth Hylton (Pamela) and Christian Pedersen (Richard Hannay, our hero) on a dark and stormy night.

Copyright 2011 by Alicia Donelan, photo courtesy of the Maltz Jupiter Theatre

My thanks again to director Peter Amster and Artistic Director Andrew Kato for a fantastic experience, and to all the designers for such a beautiful-looking show.  I just wish they could all stay and hang out with us for the whole run!  But we’ll have  a great time doing our zany little play with the fabulous staff of the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.  This show is like being a cog in a giant Swiss clock–the “show” backstage is almost as complicated and wacky as the one onstage!  Break a leg, all!  Off to opening night!!

The 39 Steps Opens Thursday November 3rd

Wow, this rehearsal period has flown by!  It feels like I just stepped off the plane in sunny Florida the other day, and yet last night we gave our first preview performance of The 39 Steps.  It went very well indeed, and we’re looking forward to putting the show in front of more audiences this week and next.  After all this intensive work, it seems a shame that we’re only running for two weeks–but it’s great that the run is already 86% sold!

Artistic Director Andrew Kato set the perfect tone on the first day of rehearsal, by having everyone in the building join the cast and production staff for a meet and greet session.  His message was simple: everyone in the building is there to help us present the best production possible.  The staff members with whom I’ve interacted have certainly gone out of their way to be helpful.  The theatre’s guild even provided us with welcome beach bags full of useful goodies, and cooked us a wonderful dinner during tech weekend.  In short, it’s a pretty great place to work.

The rehearsals themselves have been fantastic–director Peter Amster created just the kind of democratic, respectful, playful, let’s-see-what-we-discover environment that I love.  And this despite the fact that he’s directed the show many times before.  He freely admitted that while he knows what has worked in past productions, he knows that the play inevitably has a different “fit” when worn by a different set of actors.  So while we benefited from his extensive expertise with this demanding script, we also were given carte blanche to get out there and surprise him.  We laughed a LOT.  Christian Pedersen (pictured here with me in front of the theatre’s marquee) plays our hero, Richard Hannay.  Beth Hylton (a fellow grad of UNC-Chapel Hill’s MFA Acting program, and also represented by my agent, Renée Glicker of About Artists) plays the three women he encounters, and Joe Foust and I play the two Clowns who become all the other characters.  Joe is the only one who has done this script before, as he was in a prior production for Peter.  I think all four of us in the cast feel especially good that despite Peter’s vast experience with the script, we’ve still managed to come up with new interpretations and storytelling details that he hasn’t seen before.  And in turn, Peter has come up with a lot of great new ideas to enhance this production–including a hilarious final image that involves one particularly silly final costume change for me.  I’ll have to get a picture of that one to share!

We’ve also been blessed with the incredible staff at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, including enthusiastic Associate Producer/Company Manager, Rachel Blavatnik, our unflappable Production Stage Manager, Brandy DeMil, and her resourceful Assistant Stage Manager, T. Scott Wooten.  The design team has done a wonderful job of making the production look gorgeous.  I plan to do a separate post to talk a little bit about the production design, hopefully with some photos!

If you’re going to be in the Jupiter, Florida area, I encourage you to come down and see this charming and very silly show.  The cast is wonderful, the script is a hoot, and you don’t need to know the films of Alfred Hitchcock to have a great time.

New Headshots

Well, it was that time again.  Time for new headshots, to better reflect who I am these days.  I went to my buddy Hunter Canning, who, in addition to being an accomplished actor himself, is also an excellent photographer for theatre, fashion, and portraits.  Hunter and I worked together on NY Classical Theatre’s production of King Lear in 2009, with the wonderful Donald Grody, and I was impressed with his headshot portfolio.

It was great to see Hunter again, and we had a blast doing our photo shoot.  I’m thrilled with the resulting images, which are now on my home page and my downloads page.  You can see more of Hunter’s work by clicking here.  I recommend his work, whether it be for headshots, or for theatre or other images.  In fact, Hunter ended up shooting the images for the production of Ghosts that I did this summer as well.  I’ll be posting some of those images first chance I have.

A Lear Review on Free Shakespeare Site

I just came across a very interesting site called playshakespeare.com, which is a free resource offering online texts of all of William Shakespeare’s plays, as well as reviews of theatrical productions, an online community, research materials, the inevitable Bard-related shopping, and more.  It’s an ambitious site, so it’s going to take me a while to look through it, but I certainly suggest you check it out for yourself (unless you’ve already beaten me to it, which is entirely possible!).

To my surprise, I found a review of the 2009 NY Classical Theatre production of King Lear that we performed in Central Park and Battery Park.  The reviewer, Roseanne Wells, has lovely things to say about my dear friend Donald Grody as the tragic king, and she also gives a beautiful summation of the Fool and what I was doing with the role:

“Acting as a nursemaid and scolding schoolteacher, the Fool (Andrew Sellon) doles out tonics to calm Lear while chastising him through  humor and logic, the only way to avoid offending him. Sellon also infuses genuine concern for Lear, worrying about his physical and mental health, desperate to keep him from harm; he is a fool by trade, a caregiver by loyalty and love.”

I think that puts it beautifully.  To my knowledge, this is the only actual review of that production.  You can read the full review by clicking here.  If you ever come across another one somewhere, please send me the link!

You can visit PlayShakespeare.com by clicking the image on this post.  I noticed that they also have a link to an iPhone app; there’s a $9.99 “Pro” version and a free version.  I’ve downloaded the free one to start with, and will do another post if the app is really neat.

Come See Me in The 39 Steps at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Florida This November!

Okay.  I’m super excited.  First The Smurfs and now this!  My agent Renée and her associate Joe called from About Artists this afternoon to tell me I’ve landed one of the two Clown roles in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s upcoming production of the hit Hitchcock spy spoof, The 39 Steps!  I’ve been dying to do this show since I saw the NY production (which coincidentally included acting buddy Arnie Burton in a brilliant turn as one of the Clowns).  I love playing multiple characters, and I’ll be playing plenty of ’em in this show.  I also love Florida!  So this all works out nicely.

My thanks to Director Peter Amster, Artistic Director Andrew Kato, Casting Director Bob Cline, and the two wonderful readers who were there both for Monday’s initial audition and Tuesday’s callbacks.  My thanks also to Renée and Joe for ongoing enthusiasm and support.  Given how much fun I had at the auditions, I can’t wait to start rehearsals.  My partner Tim is already looking at the calendar to plan some Florida time with me.  It turns out Renée also represents one of the other performers who was selected, which means she represents half of the four-person cast!

The show starts rehearsals on October 11th, and runs from November 1-13 (closing on my birthday, which is kind of cool).  For more information about the production, click the image on this post to visit the theatre’s web site.  I hope I’ll see some of you there!  I’ll be one of the two guys in the hats.  And wigs.  And pants.  And dresses.  And phony moustaches.  And funny accents.  You get the idea…. 😉

Listen to My New Voiceover Demos!

Andrew Sellon Voiceover DemosI’m delighted to announce that I now offer a comprehensive set of voiceover samples on the Voiceovers page of my web site.  I’ve always had the commercial v/o demo available, but now I’ve added a host of others in a variety of categories, including eLearning, Documentary, Animation, World Dialects, and more.  A number of the samples are tongue-in-cheek, so I hope you have as much fun listening to them as I did writing and recording them.  In addition, the new samples have music by my old friend Elliot Sokolov, a fantastic composer and all-around great collaborator who has created music for film, television, and theatre.

To hear my new demos, click the Voiceovers link on my site, or click the microphone image on this post to visit that page.  You will have the option of launching a nifty Flash menu that will allow you to mouse over each of the samples to hear them, or for those of you using devices unable to play Flash (like iPads/iPhones), you can launch the clips individually from the links provided on the Voiceovers page.   Some of the clips contain more than one sample.  NOTE: As the Flash file contains a total of 10 demo clips, it may take up to a minute to load on some systems.

Let me know what you think!  And if you know of anyone seeking voiceover talent, please feel free to share the link to my Voiceovers page with them.  Thanks!  🙂

A bit of background on the music in the new clips: Elliot and I were in the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop together for a couple of years many moons ago, me as a lyricist/librettiest and Elliot for his music.  Others in the class included Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, two other swell people who went on to become the team responsible for Ragtime and many other fine shows.  Elliot and I lost touch over the years, until Facebook came along.  We hooked up again, began chatting, and when I asked if he knew of anyone to do some sound editing/engineering for my new voiceover demos, he revealed that these are some of the services he offers now!  So it was a great excuse to get back together and catch up after all these years, and meet his adorable puppy Augie.  I think Elliot’s music works fantastically with my demo clips.  If you want to know more about Elliot, or if you’d like to take advantage of his services as composer or sound engineer, I encourage you to visit his site by clicking here.  He’s a great guy to work with, and can write just about any kind of music imaginable!

Smurfing USA!

On Sunday, Tim and I went to see the Smurfs movie in 3D with our nephew Nicholas, his mom Patty, Tim’s brother Danny, and his wife Ginny.  We went to the brand new Ridge Hill multiplex here in Yonkers–it’s one of the only things open in this massive development (which is so big they may actually end up declaring it a village!).  We made sure to get there good and early, prepared to take silly pictures next to the movie posters in the lobby, only to find out there weren’t any at this theater!  So instead, before the action started, Danny kindly took this picture of us to mark the occasion of my major motion picture debut.

As it turns out, only about 1/3 of my little scene made it into the final film, so I’m really only onscreen for about 7 seconds.  But I still interact very briefly with Hank Azaria (aka the villainous Gargamel) and hey, I’m up there.  My thanks again to director Raja Gosnell for casting me and keeping a bit of the scene in the final film.  As soon as I walked offscreen, Nicholas leaned over to me and whispered: “You were great!!” which really made my day.  I told his mother later that being in a movie is indeed really cool, but being in a family and sharing little moments like this–now, that’s great!

Nicholas noted that we needed to stay and watch the credits at the end so that we could see my name.  When the credits rolled, he pointed out: “Look!  You’ve got a mushroom next to your name!”  Evidently in the Smurf world, that’s a good omen.  So if you end up seeing the movie and checking out the credits, look for the little red mushroom.  😉  Rumor has it that if this film makes enough money, Hank Azaria has already signed on for two more.  So maybe we’ll cross paths again at greater length in a sequel!  (And maybe the full version of the scene will show up on the DVD bonus reel…!)

The Smurfs Movie Is Out!

Well, today’s the day I make my major motion picture debut.  I play a silent waiter who runs afoul of the villain during a tasteful dinner at the Russian Tea Room.  The scene lasts all of a minute (if they kept the whole thing), but if it’s as funny on film as it was while we were having fun shooting, it should be a hoot.

My thanks again to my agent Renée Glicker of About Artists, to casting director Richard Hicks, and to wonderful director Raja Gosnell for bringing me on board and giving me such a great opportunity.  I had a fantastic time on my one day of shooting, and hope there will be many more.  Raja, what are you doing next?  😉  Thanks also to Hank Azaria, Sofia Vergara, and Tim Gunn for being both gracious and very funny during shooting of our scene, and to Benita Allen and everyone behind the scenes on the production who kept things running so smoothly despite the antics of the four identical cats!

To top it all off, our nephew Nicholas announced that he wants to see the movie first with me!  He even politely declined an invite from one of his schoolmates so that he could see it with me on Sunday in 3D.  I’m honored, and I can’t wait.

Thanks also to all my friends who have been so supportive.  I have no idea how I’ll look up there, but it’s great knowing that so many people out there are rooting for me.  That means a lot.

Exit the King–Remembering Actor Donald Grody

King Lear at Vermont Stage Company
King Lear at Vermont Stage Company

One evening last week, I went to refill a small portable bottle of non-aspirin pain reliever pills that I keep in my audition bag.  I opened both the jumbo Costco-sized bottle and the little travel size bottle, and filled the little one with pills from the big one.  I replaced the lid on the large bottle, then found myself unable to account for the whereabouts of the lid to the little bottle.  I looked everywhere.  And then, finally, I looked in a totally insane place: inside the large bottle.  Sure enough, it was there.  I could account for this mental lapse by pointing to my advancing years, but in truth I think the moment I found the little lid inside the big bottle was the moment I realized my dear friend Donald Grody was gone.   The time was out of joint, and the universe was just slightly off now somehow.

The e-mail that afternoon from his wonderful wife, Judith Anderson, had been short and loving.  The subject line was simply “Donald” and I knew the contents before I opened the message.  I read it over the phone to my partner, Tim, and neither of us knew what to say.  Donald had been in the final stage of a long and valiant battle with prostate cancer, so the news was not entirely surprising. I didn’t really have a chance to process the loss that afternoon, as I had to run into the city almost immediately after receiving the note to play Pastor Manders in a performance of Ibsen’s Ghosts.  I didn’t tell anyone at the show about Donald; I just whispered something to Donald and Judith privately before making my first entrance.  The four of us had been trying to get together for dinner for many weeks, with one thing or another making it not a good time, and now there would be no good time.  But Judith’s note assured us that he passed away peacefully in her arms, as they had both wanted.  And what actor could ask for a better exit?

There are so many things you should know about Donald, but in all fairness, I didn’t know him long enough to be the one to tell you.  He told me great stories about working with Judy Holliday and Ethel Merman, among many others.  At  one point, he served as Executive Director of our union, Actors Equity Association.  In fact, that’s where he met Judith!  He was a family man.  There’s just so much.  I’m hoping that others will chime in with their memories as well.  Together, we could write a book.  I can tell you this much from my own experience: While in his 80’s he played King Lear.  In two productions.  And speaking as his Fool in both productions, I can tell you that he was wonderful.

King Lear at  Vermont Stage Company
King Lear at Vermont Stage Company

I first met Donald through my friend Mark Nash, who was at the time the Artistic Director of Vermont Stage Company.  I knew he was doing King Lear as the company’s first full-scale Shakespeare production, and I had always wanted to play the Fool.  Although Mark was directing the production, and had directed me many times before, he said the final casting vote in this case would have to come from the actor playing the tragic king: a man named Donald Grody.  I remember thinking: “Oh, dear–I have to impress another actor in order to get this job!”  I also wondered how much of an auteur this fellow might be!

I needn’t have worried.  I was invited to Donald and Judith’s west side apartment to participate in an informal read-through of the edited script Donald had been working on for many months.  Both Donald and Judith made me feel welcome and at my ease immediately; it was impossible not to have a great time in their company.  The reading seemed to go very well, and I liked Donald’s editing work–very smart and economical, without sacrificing the poetry or the passion.  And besides that, both Donald and Judith were a lot of fun to be around.

Immediately thereafter, I was hired as Donald/Lear’s Fool, and as it turned out, I ended up sharing a dressing room with him for the production.  All the other male actors had been put together in one large room converted for the occasion, and the three women shared the other private dressing room.  Mark was unsure how Donald, the undisputed star of this production, would feel about sharing his dressing room.  But he wanted me to be there in part to make sure that Donald would feel well attended.  And who better than the Fool to attend his king?  Plus, we were the two out-of-town guest artists.  Donald never displayed any umbrage at not having his own dressing room.  In fact, quite the contrary; he was a delightful “roommate,” and a hoot.  In our first stint together in the dressing room, Donald revealed a habit of singing snippets of old popular standards (he had a beautiful voice and was in many Broadway musicals).   To his amazement, when he ended the first phrase of one Depression-era song, I picked up and provided the next line.  He was tickled pink that I shared his deep love of well-crafted vintage songs.  Throughout the run, we sang to and with each other in any odd moments we shared in our little dressing room, harmonizing at will and feeling very pleased with ourselves.  We couldn’t have had more fun.  Our castle may have been small, but he was undeniably the king, and I was happy to be his attendant and cohort.  It was during one of those relaxed sessions that he told me he was grappling with prostate cancer.  He thought he had beaten it some years back, but it had made a return and seemed intent on staying around this time.  He mentioned it with a simple matter-of-factness that I admired greatly.  He seemed to harbor neither illusion nor fear.  He just got on with things.
King Lear at New York Classical Theatre, Central Park
King Lear at New York Classical Theatre, Central Park

Rehearsals were challenging, but ultimately rewarding.  Donald understandably felt protective of his version of the script, and of the production he was carrying, but he remained open to those little moment-to-moment surprises actors love to discover, and together we discovered a great many.  I looked forward to our time together onstage each night, because I knew we were going to take each other on an exciting and very personal journey, with the audience tagging along just a few feet away.  In our production, the Fool was loyal to Lear to the death, and it made perfect sense to me.  In fact, Mark had me double as the physician in the latter half of the play, in an all-white version of my Fool’s costume, so that my “spirit” could continue to watch over Lear.  I realized over the course of our time in Burlington that I was on some level becoming Donald’s Fool offstage as well, and I couldn’t have been happier.  Donald was becoming a real friend, and also a mentor.  He couldn’t believe I didn’t have an agent, and was resolved to do something about that when we returned to New York.  Heaven knows, no one else had ever taken such a generous interest in me, with no expectation of anything in return.  He just believed I was talented and should be working all the time.  He was like that.  For my part, I was more than happy to swear my allegiance to this kind (and yes, regal) soul, regardless of anything that might or might not come later.  I had found a new and remarkable friend.

The critical and audience response to the production, and particularly Donald’s towering performance, was fantastic.   The run sold out, and the time we spent performing together in Burlington was sublime.  His wife Judith (about whom he was always speaking: “Oh, wait’ll Jude hears this…!”) and my partner Tim arrived to join the fun, and we all had a great time in Burlington.  I remember in particular one evening we dined together at a highly-regarded Asian restaurant called A Single Pebble.  When we were seated, the owner came by our table.  It turned out she had already seen the production, and had been very moved by Lear and his Fool.  She advised on our dinner order herself, sent little treats along the way while we waited for the food, and at the end of the meal, surprised us with some lovely desserts, gratis.  Donald and I didn’t say anything in particular to each other, though of course we thanked our host profusely.  But he didn’t need to say anything.  I knew we were both deeply gratified that someone out there had seen our work, and had been sufficiently affected by it that she wanted to let us know.  He was quiet, but beaming.  It may seem like a little gesture to some, but to us it was extraordinary.  I think we were both simultaneously humbled and proud, and I was so glad to share that moment with him and with the two people we loved most in the world.  Attention was paid, to paraphrase Arthur Miller.

King Lear at New York Classical Theatre, Central Park
King Lear at New York Classical Theatre, Central Park

Donald and I went on to do a second production of Lear together the following year, this time for New York Classical Theatre here in New York City.  You can see a few additional pictures from it on the rotating banner at the top of this site.  The rest of the cast was different, but again it was a wonderful experience–despite the many challenges of performing outdoors on the run in both Central Park and Battery Park over the course of two long, hot (and often rainy) summer months.  Remember, Donald was in his 80’s, the age Lear was actually supposed to be!  He always seemed to have so much energy, and in moving from location to location, often I found myself needing to keep up with him.  While he was a very bright man (did I mention he was also a lawyer?),  and didn’t tolerate nonsense for a moment, Donald still approached each new encounter with the innocence and frankness of a child; I saw that in every rehearsal and every performance without exception.  I’m glad he got to do his Lear here in New York.  I wish he could have done it somewhere indoors for an extended run so that even more people could have seen it.  I’ve seen a lot of Lears over the years, including Derek Jacobi’s admirable recent turn.  Donald was not a household name, but he stood among them, and bettered many of them.  And by the way, Donald did introduce me to his agent, Renée Glicker, of About Artists Agency.  I think we bonded because of our mutual fondness for Donald; she trusted his judgment.  I began freelancing with her, she came to see us in Lear, and in due course I ended up signing with her.  All because I read for a man named Donald Grody in his living room one evening and he took an interest in my career.

Donald and Judith were only able to make it up to our house in Yonkers once together, but it was a lovely summertime visit, and all four of us enjoyed just hanging out on the deck, sipping iced tea and swapping theatrical tales as the lazy day waxed and waned.  By then, they had bought a little pied-a-terre in Puerto Rico, and Donald enthusiastically extolled the virtues of the fresh tropical fruits he consumed there every day, insisting they were helping him fight off the prostate cancer better than many of the medicines he was regularly asked to try.

I went to see Donald as Dogberry in New York Classical’s production of Much Ado About Nothing the following summer.  He was adorable; so childlike in his innocence and delight that audience members young and old loved him immediately.  After that, his health issues began to take up more of his time and energy, and getting together became difficult.  But we were still planning another visit right up to the end, and that’s at the heart of who Donald was.  He didn’t kid himself or anyone else, but he didn’t give up, either.  He faced each new day and each new challenge, well, like a king.  And Judith, endlessly patient, resourceful, and devoted, was at his side every step of the way, every inch the queen.

Shakespeare of course didn’t include the Fool at the end of King Lear, but every night of both productions I watched from the wings as Donald died, and the actor playing Kent pronounced “Break, heart; I prithee, break!” as he held the fallen king in his arms.  I feel like Kent now.  Because this time, of course, there will be no curtain call, no songs in the dressing room, no additional performance.

I will miss you, Donald, but I will also cherish the memories of our time together onstage and off.  And I will celebrate your life every time I step onstage.  Farewell, my friend.

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.