“We don’t share everything about ourselves. And of course, we move through the world trying to project an image of ourselves that has some relationship to the totality of who we are and our experience,” actor Seth Numrich recently told me. “But it’s curated, right? We’re always trying to put our best foot forward or show people what we think they want to see from us.”

It’s an intriguing concept going into an interview with an actor like Numrich who is currently appearing in Power of Sail with Bryan Cranston and Amy Brenneman at the Geffen Playhouse.

Written by Paul Grellong, Power of Sail is about a Harvard (Cranston) professor whose invitation to a White Nationalist to speak there stirs up a hornet’s nest of controversy amongst the staff and the students. Numrich plays Lucas Poole who is a grad student who is hoping to get a prestigious fellowship that has launched several other Harvard students into high-profile and well-paying jobs.

“We come to understand and make and form opinions and judgments about these characters early in the play,” says Numrich. “And then because of the nature of the journey that the play goes on, each one of the characters something new is revealed about them. Then the audience gets to learn something and then reassess the assumptions that they made earlier in the evening. And I just think that that’s so cool and exciting because we’re all complicated.”

Numrich is accustomed to playing complicated and complex characters. He’s appeared on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, Golden Boy by Clifford Odets and The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. The 35-year-old actor also appeared opposite Kim Cattrall in a 2013 production of Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams.

“What I get really excited about is when the storytelling is truly happening through the characters. With the best writers you never feel like you’re being explained anything or you’re being taught anything. I appreciate plays that can find an entry into big, interesting, important – whatever that word means – questions about the human experience.”

Sometimes those roles require that Numrich do soul-searching to discover what he may or may not have in common with his character. When he appeared in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America and Kuwait by Daniel Talbott at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2015 he told StageBuddy.com that “I truly believe as an actor, as well as a person, that we all have the same capacities inside of us. We don’t like to look at the dark side of our nature, and we often say, ‘Oh, I could never do that. That would never be me.’ But in the right circumstances, you really don’t know.” It’s a perspective he brings to every role.

“I still believe that and it’s very important to me, in terms of the work that I do as an actor, that judging our characters makes it impossible to play any character. It’s never my job to sympathize with a character and their actions and beliefs. But it is my job to empathize with them as a human being. I feel like it’s kind of our superpower as actors is that we are professionally empathetic because we always have to be looking for and trying to understand, why is this person doing what they’re doing? Why are they behaving the way that they are? Why do they choose to move through the world in the way that they do?”

With Power of Sail Numrich says that exploration starts with the play itself.

“What I love about Paul’s writing is I think he does dialogue really well. When you’re speaking his words it never feels unnatural in any way. It always feels real and grounded, which is such a luxury. There’s so much to mine and that’s just exciting because I can just invest myself as the actor in the work I want to do there. And that feels like it naturally illuminates the text and vice versa. I don’t think I’m going to get bored by the end of this run. When I go into any scene I always have more to work on. And that’s not necessarily true of every writer.”

One of the producers of Power of Sail is Daryl Roth (a 12-time Tony Award winner for plays and musicals that includes War Horse in which Numrich appeared) which is fueling speculation that the play might soon set sail for Broadway. If it does, Numrich is confident it will be just as provocative in its next incarnation.

“There’s a lot that people can take from this play. I’ve talked to a lot of people after the show. What’s going on on stage is a mirror of what’s going on in the whole room. We’re asking people to sit for two hours with people living through these questions. It’s a nice reminder that [theater] does have something to offer that these other media do not have, which is that we’re going to all sit together in the same physical space breathing the same air. That feels like a radical, dangerous concept right now in the world. It also feels necessary and so I’m appreciative of this opportunity to do that in a way that feels really connected to the questions that certainly I have been experiencing and living through in the last couple of years.”

Power of Sail continues at the Geffen Playhouse through March 27th. More tickets and more information, please go here.

Photo: Seth Numrich in Power of Sail (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Geffen Playhouse)

The post Actor Seth Numrich: “We’re All Complicated” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Good news! For those who cannot see the reading at 8 PM EDT/5 PM PDT, there will be a second streaming of this reading at 11 PM EDT/8 PM PDT. You now have two chances to see Love Letters.

This play, which has been performed all over the world, has a relatively simple premise (and one that lends itself for a reading “in quarantine.”) Two actors, seated next to each other, read the numerous letters they exchanged between one another over the years. The first letter was written when they were seven and the letter-writing continues for five decades.

Cranston reads the part of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. Field reads the part of Melissa Gardner. They both come from wealthy families. Over the fifty years of these letters, success and failure in school, war, marriage, politics, love, parenting and more are the stories and topics discussed in these letters.

Cranston appeared on Broadway in the plays All The Way in 2014 and Network in 2018-2019. He won Tony Awards for both performances. He won four Emmy Awards for his performance as Walter White in Breaking Bad. He was in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Argo, as Jack O’Donnell.

Field appeared on Broadway in the plays The Goat, or Who is Sylvia in 2002 and was Tony-nominated for her performance as Amanda Wingfield in the 2017 production of The Glass Menagerie. She is a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and won Academy Awards for her performances in Norma Rae and Places in the Heart.

Jerry Zaks, who won back-to-back Tony Awards for directing a play (Six Degrees of Separation) and a musical (a revival of Guys and Dolls) directs this reading. He’s the director of Mrs. Doubtfire on Broadway and the upcoming revival of The Music Man.

Playwright Gurney, who passed away in 2017, had four plays on Broadway: The Golden Age, Sweet Sue, Sylvia and two productions of Love Letters. In 1990 Love Letters was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. (The winner that year was August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.)

As with the two previous Spotlight on Plays performances (November, Significant Other), these readings are free, but are designed as fundraisers for The Actors Fund and their Covid-19 Emergency Assistance.

Remember that these events are not archived for later viewing.

Update: This post has been updated to include a second showing of this reading.

Photo of Bryan Cranston and the company of Network by Jan Versweyveld

The post Spotlight on Plays: “Love Letters” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

All the Way depicted Johnson up to and immediately after President Kennedy’s assassination. The Great Society will follow Johnson as he begins his administration, navigates turmoil at home and the growing war in Vietnam. The play follows Johnson up to his decision not to run for re-election.

Schenkkan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Kentucky Cycle in 1992, has spent a lot of time working and re-working The Great Society. There have been at least six productions of the play prior to its New York opening. Bill Rauch, who also directed All the Way, helmsThe Great Society.

Starring as Johnson is Brian Cox (currently seen in HBO’s Succession). Richard Thomas (The Americans) plays Hubert Humphrey. Grantham Colman, who appeared in Choir Boy at the Geffen Playhouse, plays Martin Luther King, Jr. Marc Kudisch (Assassins) plays Richard J. Daley. Bryce Pinkham (A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder) plays Robert Kennedy. Frank Wood, most recently seen in Network on Broadway, plays Everett Dirksen. The rest of the sizable cast includes Gordon Clapp, Marchánt Davis, Brian Dykstra, Barbara Garrick, David Garrison, Ty Jones, Christopher Livingston, Angela Pierce, Matthew Rauch, Nikkole Salter, Tramell Tillman, Ted Deasy and Robyn Kerr.

In a New York Times story about the play coming to Broadway, Schenkkan is quoted as saying about the difference between his two plays, “All the Way is a drama and The Great Society is a tragedy.”

With these two plays and Robert Caro’s detailed study of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th President is getting more than his share of attention these days.

The official opening night for The Great Society is October 1st. The play will run through November 30th.

For tickets go here.

This post will be updated once production photos have been released.

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