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Acting Classes NYC
Theatre Group
Amazing, isnt it, what could be hidden behind those sober jackets and ties that made American men look all but interchangeable in the early 1950s. The Temperamentals, Jon Marans eminently likable docudrama about gay identity in the age of Eisenhower, begins with a classic vision of mid-20th-century uniformity: five guys in off-the-peg suits, as anonymous as the standard-issue, metal-frame chairs on which they are seated.
No way that, after a first glance, you could pick one out of a lineup. But wait, see those two in the middle? One of them, the bulkier of the pair, has planted his foot on that of the other one, who is, on closer inspection, better dressed. There is some sort of relationship going on there, for sure. But it may take a while to figure out exactly what it is. I mean, for them as well as for us, the voyeurs in the audience.
Discovering what lurks beneath gray flannel (or perhaps tropical worsted, since the setting is Los Angeles) is both the theme and the story-propelling engine of The Temperamentals, which chronicles the creation of the Mattachine Society, the breakthrough gay-rights organization. And in Mr. Marans play the journey to such knowledge is hardly (you should pardon the expression) a straight line.
The characters in The Temperamentals based on real people and lovingly incarnated by a cast led by Thomas Jay Ryan and Michael Urie, do not shed their suits to become the radiant creatures they always knew they were. Like all of us they are too complicated and conflicted for that kind of metamorphosis. What lies beneath their own surfaces keeps surprising them.
The Thickness of Skin performances at 8 PM Friday through Monday evenings and Sunday matinees at 3 PM at The Barrow Group's Studio Theatre, 312 W. 36th Street, 3rd Floor, in Manhattan.
Tickets are $25 and available at www.smarttix.com or by calling 212-868-4444.
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Under the direction of co-artistic directors Lee Brock and Seth Barrish, founded in 1986, The Barrow Group (TBG) has earned its award-winning reputation for unconditional dedication to the art of acting. Originally founded and operated out of a railroad flat on Barrow Street, TBG has grown into a mid-size theatre organization currently housed in the "Theatre Building" in Midtown. TBG received a 2005 Drama Desk nomination for Best Play for Pentecost and received the 1995 Drama Desk Award for Off-Off Broadway Excellence.
TBG's commitment to developing new plays is currently witnessed with the Broadway production of A Steady Rain, which received a workshop at TBG in 2007; Off-Broadway hit and Drama Desk Award nominee Sleepwalk With Me, starring Mike Birbiglia and developed and directed by Seth Barrish; Jon Maran's The Temperamentals, which began in our Reading Series receiving subsequent runs in both our Studio Theatre and on our Main Stage as a co-production of Man Underdog and Daryl Roth Productions.
