#1
Posted: 7/16/04 at 10:05pm
How many times have people told you anyone could be on stage? Well, it looks like Mr. Kattan learned the hard way. Here are some choice excerpts from an LA Times interview:
By Geraldine Baum, Times Staff Writer
While the others, including the star of the show, Nathan Lane, anxiously mutter new verses to themselves, only funnyman Chris Kattan seems not to be paying attention. He should be figuring out how he'll crunch the word "con-sci-en-tious" into three notes during his solo. Instead he's fidgeting, looking around, pushing his cap back and forth — and chewing. In fact, he's been eating throughout the afternoon rehearsal, pulling pieces of a Power Bar out of his baggy pants pocket and popping them in his mouth, like a Pekingese dog gobbling treats.
*******
Kattan was told, he says, that his "articulation" on stage wasn't clear and, more importantly, that he "didn't speak the language of the theater."
********
However, he acknowledges there were problems — in his performance, in his pairing with Lane and in the production overall. He simply didn't think it would come to an abrupt breakup.
jokes Lane scripted for the slave-sidekick were well-received by preview audiences. (Example: "My parents sold me into slavery because they desperately needed the money. They opened the first adult novelty shop in [Athens]," Xanthias says. "Basically, they sold condoms to the Trojans.") But Kattan and Lane never seemed to establish an onstage chemistry. And the more Lane was focused on his role as writer — or relentless rewriter, as the case may be — the more Kattan "stopped having fun."
****** And now..mean Kattan:
"I thought I was being invited to do a Crosby and Hope, road-to-Hades-type show with lots of playful back-and-forth bits," he says. "But by the end, it was more about Crosby than Hope."
********
It had never been a dream of the 33-year-old actor to appear on Broadway. But he came, and he was unprepared, by his own admission, when he ran headlong into the routine practice of the theater in which scripts, songs, monologues and even characters are tampered with — often up to opening night. Though he was not in a position to challenge his more experienced colleagues, Kattan found the whole unremitting process, in his word, "unfair," and certainly not altogether rational.
"I didn't know this world, and now I do," he says. "I had a great experience, and it's not going to hurt my career. But to work in theater it helps to have been trained as a theater actor."
Couldn't have said it better Chris! P Diddy, Melanie..ya listening?
PS- He also goes on how Roger Bart plays "gay" characters and he did not see the character as "gay". Well thanks so much for your earth shaking insight Chris!
By Geraldine Baum, Times Staff Writer
While the others, including the star of the show, Nathan Lane, anxiously mutter new verses to themselves, only funnyman Chris Kattan seems not to be paying attention. He should be figuring out how he'll crunch the word "con-sci-en-tious" into three notes during his solo. Instead he's fidgeting, looking around, pushing his cap back and forth — and chewing. In fact, he's been eating throughout the afternoon rehearsal, pulling pieces of a Power Bar out of his baggy pants pocket and popping them in his mouth, like a Pekingese dog gobbling treats.
*******
Kattan was told, he says, that his "articulation" on stage wasn't clear and, more importantly, that he "didn't speak the language of the theater."
********
However, he acknowledges there were problems — in his performance, in his pairing with Lane and in the production overall. He simply didn't think it would come to an abrupt breakup.
jokes Lane scripted for the slave-sidekick were well-received by preview audiences. (Example: "My parents sold me into slavery because they desperately needed the money. They opened the first adult novelty shop in [Athens]," Xanthias says. "Basically, they sold condoms to the Trojans.") But Kattan and Lane never seemed to establish an onstage chemistry. And the more Lane was focused on his role as writer — or relentless rewriter, as the case may be — the more Kattan "stopped having fun."
****** And now..mean Kattan:
"I thought I was being invited to do a Crosby and Hope, road-to-Hades-type show with lots of playful back-and-forth bits," he says. "But by the end, it was more about Crosby than Hope."
********
It had never been a dream of the 33-year-old actor to appear on Broadway. But he came, and he was unprepared, by his own admission, when he ran headlong into the routine practice of the theater in which scripts, songs, monologues and even characters are tampered with — often up to opening night. Though he was not in a position to challenge his more experienced colleagues, Kattan found the whole unremitting process, in his word, "unfair," and certainly not altogether rational.
"I didn't know this world, and now I do," he says. "I had a great experience, and it's not going to hurt my career. But to work in theater it helps to have been trained as a theater actor."
Couldn't have said it better Chris! P Diddy, Melanie..ya listening?
PS- He also goes on how Roger Bart plays "gay" characters and he did not see the character as "gay". Well thanks so much for your earth shaking insight Chris!
Ignorance is temporary. Stupidity last forever.
Watch out BWW...
HE'S BACK.
Updated On: 7/16/04 at 10:05 PM
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