By Sami DeSocio
There seems to be an unspoken rule onstage- either you do musicals or plays -and never the two shall meet or cross. But there are plenty of actors that do just as well in a play as they do in a big musical! So the question remains, do you really need to pick a side?
The best example of this I know is Harvey Fierstein. We all know how I feel about this wonderful man from my past blogs. Harvey is a versatile actor with many credits, onscreen and off, both musical and play. He not only wrote Torch Song Trilogy, but also starred in it as Arthur, a drag queen who falls in love with another young man, all at the duress of his mother. Make no mistake about it though, folks, this was a play. It was not a musical by any stretch of the imagination. It did things emotionally that one just can’t do in a musical.
Then there’s people like Nathan Lane, who of course made his name in musicals such as The Producers, The Frogs, and The Addams Family. But Nathan has also done straight theatre, such as his role of the President when he was in David Mamet’s November a few years back.
Then there’s those actors who would love to do more musicals, but unfortunately keep getting cast in plays like myself. I have a trained musical theatre voice and have been in voice lessons since age ten. However most of the play houses I work with produce plays because they are cheaper. Not that I haven’t done musicals, I have some big ones on my resume, but I have mostly plays. I love being able to walk in both worlds and know what to do in both.
In my personal opinion, I believe being able to do both plays and musicals makes one a better actor, and pigeonholing yourself to doing one or the other can really come back and haunt you when you go for roles on either side of the fence.
Actos have done it before, and will continue to perform in both plays and musicals, you really shouldn’t have to pick a side.