Take Me Out

Today I saw Take Me Out for the second time, and once again it reminded me why I wanted to be an actor.  Suzie Elliott (my friend from work - actually the lady who replaced me as my boss' assistant after I left my temp assignment to do You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown and then later joined the Council full-tim - and I went because she'd found an internet deal on tickets, and had never seen the show.  I'm not entirely sure that I actually wrote about seeing the play the first time I saw it, though I'm not sure why I wouldn't.

I loved this play - as I love most of Richard Greenberg's plays.  Three Days of Rain is one of my favorite plays ever, and I've enjoyed Eastern Standard and The Third Man, but I'm beginning to think that maybe this one is his best.

My friends seem to think that every regional theater in the country is going to be doing this show in the next couple of years, but I really wonder.  The casting is a bear.  The lead has to be a ½ black, ½ white gorgeous man who could convincingly be a stunning and gifted athlete, you need an Asian-American actor who's fluent in Japanese, two Hispanic actors who are fluent in Spanish, and assorted white actors, ALL of whom have to be willing to appear nude on stage.

On top of it all, there's a tour de force role for one exceptionally gifted comedic actor, and even if you could cast it, that poor bastard would forever live in the shadow of Dennis O'Hare, who's playing the role on Broadway, and who'll win a Tony Award for it if there's any sort of justice in the world.

But the point, however, of this entire diatribe, is that this show - and, I'll admit, Denis O'Hare's role in particular - really, really brought home to me what I love best about being an actor.  To have material that's really fun to work with, and to forge such a connection with an audience that they get just as caught up in what it is that you're doing as you do yourself... it's difficult to describe, but it's transporting.  I was getting goose-bumps as I was feeling everyone around me being swept up in the passion for baseball that O'Hare's character was discovering.

I love theater, and I love audiences, and I love actors for being able to do what they do.  Which is probably why it makes my blood boil when people off the street seem to think that what these artists do is somehow unworthy of support in a society where producing a widget and selling it for three times what it cost you to make is somehow admirable.  Fucking Puritans and their fucking work ethic. Don't get me started.