How to play the only “normal” woman in “The Addams Family”

Welcome to Building Character, TDF Stages’ ongoing series about actors and how they create their roles

—

If you’re used to vamping it up, then how do you button it down? Heidi Blickenstaff solved that Zen riddle when she got cast in The Addams Family, the Broadway musical based on Charles Addams’ gleefully macabre cartoons.

Since March, Blickenstaff has played Alice Beineke, a repressed, “normal” woman whose son falls in love with the demented-yet-alluring Wednesday Addams. When Alice visits the Addams mansion for a family dinner, she’s a sunny aberration among the cobwebs and killer plants. “She’s one of those people who moves through life making everybody very comfortable,” Blickenstaff says. “She hears all this stuff and her answer to it is always, ‘Oh! Totally normal! That’s not crazy that I’m looking at a photo of your cousin Helga who has two heads!”

[Read more →]

How the actor is tackling two roles for Shakespeare in the Park

One advantage of performing in repertory is the chance to try on a variety of roles: Coriolanus one night, a stable hand the next. Alternatively, there’s the subtler satisfaction of finding different nuances within similar characters. Just ask André Holland, a central part of the Public Theater’s current season of Shakespeare in the Park.

In All’s Well That Ends Well, directed by Daniel Sullivan, the rising young actor plays Bertram, a callow nobleman who snubs the heroine, spurring all sorts of trouble. In Measure for Measure, directed by David Esbjornson, he plays Claudio, a callow nobleman who tries to corrupt the heroine (a nun, no less), spurring even more trouble.

[Read more →]

Galactic Girl in: Attack of the Starbarians!

A festival at the Brick asks what comics can do on stage

It’s just by coincidence that as a certain webslinger comes to Broadway, the Brick Theater in Brooklyn is hosting its first-ever Comic Book Theater Festival through July 1. However, even though it shares a medium with Spider-Man, the festival is designed to remind audiences that comics offer much more than superheroes.

[Read more →]

From revivals of old favorite to meetings with new artists, this year’s Fringe is already going strong

You’ve got to love the scrappiness of FringeNYC. As it presents over 200 theatre and dance productions, the festival always seems energetic and raw, like it’s running on excitement and artistic ambition.

However, it takes an enormous amount of work to create that bohemian vibe, and planning for this year’s festival began just weeks after last year’s ended.

[Read more →]

Playwrights Horizons launches an innovative program for parents

It’s a common conundrum: Parents in the tri-state area want to experience the city’s theatre scene, but they struggle with the compound cost of tickets, babysitting, and travel. When they can’t solve this riddle, once-avid theatre supporters often throw up their hands in exasperation and stay home.

The staff at Playwrights Horizons thought this situation was unfortunate, intolerable—and fixable. Thanks to its new Playtime series , the company is making it possible for the entire family to spend an afternoon at the theatre.

[Read more →]