Makes Me Wanna Move, Be A New York Actor Again.
The Labyrinth Theater is doing a fundraiser on December 7th, 2009, in New York. It’s called Celebrity Charades 7. Here’s their video promos, check out these actors and how creative and enticing this whole gig is.
Damn, makes me remember the good stuff.
New York was always known to be the place that spawned the best actors. The most seriously, good, actors. The most artistically-grounded actors. There used to be a certain snobbery; doing movies, television, anything commercial, was almost considered to be selling-out. The idea of ‘movie star‘ was offensive to some hardcore New York Actors. ‘Acting’, and ‘celebrity’, they were considered worlds apart.
BTW, here’s Labyrinth’s list of confirmed actors, so far, who will be onstage:
Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Krasinski, Billy Crudup,Christopher Meloni, Jesse L. Martin,Sam Rockwell, Julia Roberts, Shannon Elizabeth,Padma Lakshmi, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Julia Stiles,Justin Theroux, Yul Vázquez, Kristen Wiig,David Zayas, John Ortiz, Cynthia Rowley,Bob Balaban, Bobby Cannavale, Tom Colicchio…
New York Acting Community, That Was Then…
I never liked snobbery, but I did like differentiation. New York had a real reverence for the depth of acting, and the artform. And those actors that had that same approach to their craft, lived in New York.
That approach never made it, somehow, across the country to California. Not before then, and, not after so many of the New York theater venues dried
up, due to real estate inflation. Much of that acting sensibility did leave Manhattan, dissipating with the passage of time. With trends, and materialism. The rise of celebrity, paparazzi, gossip, contributed too. And then, the movie studios were bought up by giant conglomerates…
Watching These Videos, I Missed My N.Y. 4th Floor Walk-Up
I missed Cafe Central. I missed the noise, the dirt, the subways to auditions. I missed a real community of actors, and discussions about craft and plays over drinks with other actors, of all different New York success levels. Alongside visiting actors from California, who would fly in to get a dose of the real thing; before heading back to LA so they could, once again, endure the necessary machine of The Industry.
Although there really aren’t many affordable living spaces, for actors, in Manhattan anymore, or any artists for that matter; I hear many of them did relocate, to Brooklyn. I hope so.
It was magical to be an actor then. Different. Maintained an age-old reverence for acting, and standards.
Best-
Dana
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