NEW YORK (AP) — One in all Broadway’s extra spectacular performances this season is by Andrew Durand, who’s a kinetic power within the first half of “Dead Outlaw” and completely immobile within the second. For some 40 minutes, he is a corpse, standing in a coffin.
“Some nights I want to scream. Some nights I want to rip my skin off — that pressure that you can’t move starts to get to me. And so there are nights that it is very challenging,” says the actor.
Durand stars within the musical as Elmer McCurdy, a real-life alcoholic drifter-turned-failed bandit who was shot lifeless in 1911 however whose afterlife proved to be stranger than fiction.
His embalmed physique turns into a prized possession for half a century, transported throughout the nation to participate in carnival sideshows, wax museums, Hollywood horror films, roadside sights and, lastly, a prop at an amusement-park experience within the Nineteen Seventies.
“You watch him have this successful career as a corpse,” says Durand. “I think it just makes people really think about their own humanity: What’s important while we are alive? What do we do with the time that we have while we’re alive?”
‘My toes are falling asleep’
The musical — conceived by David Yazbek, who wrote the “Dead Outlaw” music and lyrics with Erik Della Penna — reunites Yazbek with e book author Itamar Moses and the director David Cromer, who collaborated so winningly on “The Band’s Visit.”
It is Durand’s first time because the lead on Broadway, following roles in “Shucked,” “Ink,” Head Over Heels” and “War Horse.” He spent a few years with the Kneehigh Theatre Firm, a troupe the place the ensemble was highlighted.
“My favorite thing about theater is the collaborative nature,” he says. “It’s a big moment for me, and I’m excited about it. But, yes, I’m trying to remain grounded.”
Durand, who hails from Rossville, Georgia, has been with “Dead Outlaw” from the start when he was forged in final 12 months’s off-Broadway premiere. That is a number of standing and never transferring.
“It’s different every night in terms of how easy it is on my body. Some nights I just sail through and I’m like, ‘Oh, I didn’t have to blink once and it was fine.’ And then other nights my toes are falling asleep and there’s tears running down my face.”
Whereas within the first half he is a hard-drinking, hard-fighting, table-jumping stressed soul, he says he units small objectives throughout his time as a corpse, like ready for the precise second when a co-star walks in entrance of him so he can blink or swallow. He additionally performs phrase video games in his head.
“I’ll think of a word like ‘pencil.’ And then I’ll try to think of a bunch of other words that start with the letter ‘P.’ And then if I find myself saying ‘pickle,’ then I start to think about foods,” he says. “It’s just like stream-of-consciousness things to keep me distracted from what’s going on.”
He is no dummy
His nights could be simpler if the present simply changed him with a dummy, however Cromer, on the first workshop, approached Durand and nixed that notion.
“He said, ‘Just so you know, if this show happens, I’m not going to make a dummy version of you to put in that coffin. I think it’s very important to have the actual performer in that coffin so that we are constantly reminded of his humanity.’”
Cromer has been amazed at how Durand has created a personality of straightforwardness and truthfulness merely from finding out {a photograph} of McCurdy.
“Andrew Durand as a performer is a guy who you give him whatever the prompt is and he goes away and brings you 10 times more than you asked for and has completely created, well-thought-out version of things,” says the director.
“Dead Outlaw” just isn’t Durand’s first time taking part in a corpse onstage. He portrayed a lifeless man as an adolescent in a group playhouse manufacturing of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Years later, he is simply attempting to serve his new work.
“I look at it as just another challenge of the performance that I’m trying to give, you know? And so I take it just as seriously as any of the songs I sing.”
Loads of corpses
Durand finds himself in a Broadway season with loads of corpses, albeit none as taxing as his personal work. There’s “Operation Mincemeat,” about an actual World Conflict II mission during which Allied troopers dressed up a corpse to divert their German foes, and there is “Floyd Collins,” a musical a few cave explorer who slowly dies underground. Then there are all of the lifeless individuals on the finish of “Othello.”
“I think it’s just an odd coincidence,” says Durand.
One in all his nightly rituals is to get on the empty stage on the Longacre Theatre about an hour earlier than the curtain goes as much as have fun residing — not demise.
“I like to take a little moment of peace and a breath for myself to look out into the empty seats and have a little bit of reverence and respect for what theater is and that in just a half-hour, there’s going to be a thousand people out there who have agreed to buy in on this story that we’re about to tell them.”
