(and i would way rather be bill murray than scarlett johansson. he was a ghostbuster, man…)

I’m teaching these teens right now and we keep going over the same stanislavsky maxim:

“The person you are is 10000 times more interesting than any character you could play.”

This is to say that in an ideal world i would like to see and hear Christine’s Viola or Chirstine’s Nina. If it’s not incorporating you, it’s probably gonna be crappy. I think those actors that just “play themselves” are just not incorporating he given circumstances fully. they forget the Magic If.
– What if I was this person in these circumstances? It’s more of a -I am me, occasionally responding to stimuli…

Where am I going with this….I guess i’m saying I don’t have a problem with celebrity if it’s a result of your reputation as an artist and not your off stage/screen exploits. The good ones always make you forget anyways.

Knock em out in Tokyo, I’m having weird visions of Lost In Translation starring Christine, except you’re Bill Murray. (Note I have no recollection of the name of the character he plays in the film.)

i think fame and celebrity is a bit of a double-edged sword for actors. (actually, let me qualify that. i like to make the sweeping generalization that there tend to be two types of actors – those that transform into the characters they take on and those that more or less play themselves over and over. this double-edged sword business applies to the former.)

being well-known can be fantastic because it can open a lot of doors and provide tremendous opportunities. there is a marketability to famous people that makes them very hirable. the problem, to my mind, is that it becomes difficult to divorce a famous person’s real life from the work they’re doing. will anybody ever be able to watch a lindsay lohan movie and forget for a second how fucked up she is?

it’s grand for business, but perhaps gets in the way of art. would i absolutely love to be offered work without auditioning because i’m well-known? yep. do i want people to watch christine acting instead of nina or viola or hagar or whoever? no thank you. i want them to see the story, not the pieces.

i think we absolutely need to celebrate our theatre artists, but i would be sick to see it go the way of film industry.

the irony of this soapbox, of course, is that i’m promoting my ass off in tokyo and am heading out the door to a press conference in 20 minutes. hm… who’s a hypocrite?

Theatre Stalker definitely needs to be a regular feature here.

We take a local playwright or one act play and get some celebrities like Brad Pitt vs George Clooney directing two different interpretations and your ticket gets you along to see both shows. At interval you can go to the bar, or stick around to watch Paris and Britney in a sort of bitch slap off!