For Andrew Durand, the group stage led to Broadway.
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If you happen to have been a theater child in Roswell within the Nineteen Nineties, you knew Roswell Village Playhouse. Tucked behind a shopping mall on the nook of Freeway 9 and Freeway 92, it offered full seasons of performs for kids and adults with volunteer casts of all ages. One of many many theater children who got here via the doorways of the unassuming venue was Andrew Durand.
A primary-time Tony Award nominee this Broadway season for Lifeless Outlaw, Durand’s love for theater started at age 10 when he attended a play at Roswell Village Playhouse.
“I noticed all these adults and youngsters treating one another as equals: taking part in collectively on stage, having enjoyable and telling tales,” says Durand, including that he discovered a second house and loads of mentors on the group theater. “I used to be all the time asking my mother to drive me to Roswell Village Playhouse. Even when I wasn’t in a present, I used to be there serving to paint the units or serving to with costumes or promoting popcorn — something I might do to be round these individuals, round that magic.”
A few of his fondest reminiscences are from the theater’s annual staging of A Christmas Carol, which he likens to spending Christmas with 70 members of the family.
“Mainly, anyone that wished to be in it could possibly be in it,” he says. “If one of many children [in a family] was taking part in a Cratchit, then the entire household would come and simply be within the crowd scenes at the start of the present.”
His circle of relatives joined him within the Dickens play, together with stepsister Paige Faure, who can also be a Broadway veteran, showing now in Stephen Sondheim’s Outdated Buddies.
Persevering with to chase the magic he first encountered in Roswell has led Durand to his most difficult position ever. Starring in his sixth Broadway present because the titular “lifeless outlaw,” the actor is virtually in two totally different musicals. Within the first, he energetically sings and runs everywhere in the stage, and, within the second, he stands in a coffin, lifeless and immobile. With eyes open and toes naked, others carry out round him, usually rolling him across the stage.
“It’s between 40 and 45 minutes of standing completely nonetheless, trying to not blink,” he says. “I swallow or blink when a fellow actor walks in entrance of me to cross the stage or once they transfer me round.”
Lifeless Outlaw tells the weird and true story of Elmer McCurdy, a turn-of-the-century ne’er-do-well whose profession is characterised by failed robberies, culminating in his demise after his closing heist on a prepare in 1911. When nobody claims his physique, the coroner begins showcasing McCurdy as a facet present, with curious patrons paying to see “an actual lifeless outlaw.”
So begins McCurdy’s decades-long “after-life” in present enterprise as his corpse is shuffled amongst wax museums, movies and amusement parks. Guests to the exhibit usually mistook the physique for a dummy, not realizing they have been seeing a real-life corpse.
“He wasn’t buried till the Seventies, when his physique was discovered hanging in a enjoyable home in Lengthy Seaside, California,” says Durand. For these taking part in alongside at house, this implies his after-life nearly doubled his precise life.
Alongside Durand’s Greatest Actor in a Musical nod, the present has six extra Tony Award nominations, together with Greatest Musical. These honors will not be a shock, given the artistic group behind Lifeless Outlaw additionally created juggernaut musical The Band’s Go to, which swept the 2018 Tonys. Moreover, Lifeless Outlaw’s 2024 Off-Broadway premiere garnered its personal nominations and significant acclaim, together with a win for Durand.
The outcomes of the newest Tony Awards might be revealed at a ceremony on June 8, although Durand admits his profession has by no means been about chasing awards.
“Even as much as school [at the Boston Conservatory], I by no means thought, ‘I’m going to be on Broadway, be a star, win Tony Awards and issues like that,’” he says. “I actually was all the time doing it as a result of it was a lot enjoyable, and I beloved the individuals.”
In his early days of performing, Durand’s involvement usually hinged on the enjoyable and collaboration he discovered at Roswell Village Playhouse (which later moved and have become Kudzu Playhouse) and North Springs Excessive Faculty.
“I by no means actually received to the Alliance [Theatre] or locations like that as a result of I simply had a lot enjoyable with these individuals,” he says. Roswell Village Playhouse even gave him his first expertise taking part in a lifeless physique in Arsenic and Outdated Lace at age 15. On one other memorable event, he and his father performed prisoners handcuffed collectively in The Man Who Got here to Dinner.
“Backstage, we painted blood and black eyes on one another like we had been combating,” he recollects.
And what would 10-year-old Andrew, operating round backstage on the group theater, consider seeing his older self nominated for a Tony Award some a long time later?
“I feel my 10-year-old self would suppose, ‘Effectively, that’s fairly cool, however is it as cool as A Christmas Carol at Roswell Village Playhouse?” Durand quips. “I’m not so positive.’”
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Sally Fuller is a theater nerd and journalist who additionally noticed her first play as a baby at Roswell Village Playhouse and by no means wished to go away. Her writing has appeared in Encore Atlanta, Metropolis Way of life Journal and the AJC, amongst others. When not writing, she works at her dream job as a mom, alongside the perfect husband and father on the planet.
