The actress stars as a blind corporate climber in “Lonely, I’m not”

Olivia Thirlby is mostly known for her girlish likeability in films like Juno and The Wackness, but when she strides on stage in Lonely, I’m Not, the new Paul Weitz play at Second Stage, it’s clear she’s nobody’s sweetheart.

Thirlby plays Heather, a corporate analyst who’s strong-minded, iron-willed, and resistant to showing weakness. She also happens to be blind, but that’s had no bearing on her drive for success.

For the actress, playing a character who can’t see is far less daunting than playing a woman who operates from her left brain. “This is the most challenging role I’ve played, and it’s not just because of the blindness,” Thirlby says. “It’s finding parts of [Heather] that I understand.”

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Bryce Pinkham and Da’Vine Joy Randolph shape Broadway roles

“I get scared every night. Every single night.” So says Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who’s playing psychic Oda Mae Brown in the Broadway musical Ghost.

It’s easy to understand why she’d be nervous. For one thing, Ghostis based on the beloved and well-remembered 1990 film about Sam Wheat, a ghost who asks Oda Mae to help him find his killer and protect his wife, Molly. It’s also the very definition of a modern major musical. High-tech effects, sophisticated video projections, and a rock score by Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard all make it feel larger than life.

Still, the actors need to deliver to grounded performances. Even in a show about ghosts, they need to seem human.

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The Tony winner fights death in “The Lyons”

Sometimes, an actor has to play a character more than once before he’s happy with his performance.

Just ask Dick Latessa (pictured above left), whose forty years of theatre experience include Cabaret, The Will Rogers Follies, and a Tony Award-winning turn as Wilbur Turnblad in Hairspray.

Currently, Latessa’s on Broadway in The Lyons, Nicky Silver’s dark comedy about a family that’s trying to make peace before Ben Lyons, the patriarch, dies. And sure, there are tender moments, but they always devolve into shouting matches about drinking problems, ancient grudges, and the romantic potential of a cancer patient down the hall.

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How the actress became an action heroine for “Peter and the Starcatcher”

There are eleven men in the cast and only one woman, but still, Peter and the Starcatcher is a boon for female audiences.

In Rick Elice’s action-adventure play, now at Broadway’s Brooks Atkinson Theatre, we learn the origin story of Peter Pan, Captain Hook, and all the other characters from the familiar classic. As they’re performing, the actors create the entire world, using ropes and sheets to suggest ships and islands and turning their own bodies into hallways and doors. The jumping, posing, and tumbling give the play a uniquely physical magic.

And Celia Keenan-Bolger is jumping with everyone else. She plays Molly, a clever girl who works with her father to keep magical “star stuff” from falling into wicked hands. In the midst of a mission, she meets a group of orphaned boys who have been captured by a cruel ship’s captain, and naturally, being brave, she rescues them. One of the boys is Peter (Adam Chanler-Berat), and as they become friends, they help each other through swordfights, ocean rescues, and the scary moment when you fall in love.

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In “You Better Sit Down,” the company interviews their own parents

The Civilians wanted to write a play about divorce. That much they knew.

“I remember being incensed by the movie Stepmom because I was like, ‘That’s not what it’s like,’” says playwright-performer Jennifer R. Morris, whose parents got divorced when she was young. “I felt like there was a dearth [of good material]. As a subject matter, it seemed like something that affected so many people.”

What began as a concept took over five years to translate into You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents’ Divorce, the latest project from Civilians that uses the real words of real people to explore a major social theme. (Pervious works have tackled Evangelical Christianity, climate change, and gentrification.)

Often, the story of a Civilians production reveals itself as the company interviews experts, figureheads, and everyday people. This means the company members are passionate outsiders looking in, and while their shows are always emotional, they also contain a thoughtful detachment.

But You Better Sit Down, now playing at the Flea Theatre through May 6, springs from a much more personal place.

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