By Christopher Wallenberg
30 Jul 2010

	Kristen Bush and Kevin Kline in King Lear
	photo by Michal Daniel

Despite those big-screen triumphs and his wide acclaim as a film actor, Kline is perhaps most revered for his work on stage. The classically trained actor (a Juilliard grad) won two Tony Awards early in his career, for the musicals On the Twentieth Century and The Pirates of Penzance. His three-decade-long association with the Public Theater found him playing leading roles in everything from Hamlet to King Lear to Richard III and Henry V, not to mention acting with longtime pal and screen icon Meryl Streep in Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children and Chekhov's The Seagull. In 2007, Kline returned to Broadway as the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac, for which he received an Outer Critics Circle Award.

Still, there must be some great role in the theatre canon that Kline hasn't played but still wants to tackle?

"Before dying?" he jokes.

Is there any chance we'll ever see the actor in a Broadway musical again?

"The problem with Broadway musicals is they're so expensive — unless you're doing Urinetown or something Off-Off-Broadway," he said. "They're so big, and they need a year's commitment, and it better be a great musical, because that's eight shows a week for a year. Whereas, you can do Hamlet for 12 weeks at the Public Theater or King Lear — or Cyrano. Cyrano was really an unusual thing for Broadway. A limited 12-week run of a classic play with 30-plus people in the cast. That's very expensive. But the backers actually got their money back. That's a rare thing. So it's unlikely you'll see me in a musical on Broadway."

As the actor got up to leave, he left us with one choice nugget, but declined to offer any specifics: "I'm sure I'll do something else on stage soon...In fact, there's something — a play — that I'm considering doing this season. On Broadway!"

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	Marian Seldes in "The Extra Man"
	photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures

"The Extra Man," which was filmed around New York City, features a slew of top acting talent that's regularly seen on stages across the city. In addition to Mr. Kline, the film co-stars Marian Seldes, a grande dame of the New York theatre who was, in fact, one of Kline's instructors at Juilliard. Other stage actors in supporting roles include John Pankow, Celia Weston, Lynn Cohen and Jason Butler Harner. John C. Reilly, who plays Henry's hirsute neighbor with the fluttery voice, got his start as an actor on the Chicago stage, acting in numerous productions at the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre. He starred in True West opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2000 and in A Streetcar Named Desire with Jessica Lange in 2005, both on Broadway. Even the younger actors have done serious theatre. Katie Holmes, who plays a co-worker that Louis has a crush on, was on Broadway in All My Sons in 2008, while Dano has experience acting both on and Off-Broadway.

The film's directors and co-writers, Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman, who cast Paul Giamatti, another theatre veteran, as the lead in their 2003 film "American Splendor," said they always look out for actors with a stage resume while casting a film. In fact, they prefer that type of experience.

"I really like actors that come from the stage," said Berman. "I really feel like it completes you as an actor to have spent time on stage. And I really do look for theatre-trained actors. It's weird, I don't even have to know it. I feel like I can tell it, too. When you audition an actor, I think you can sense whether they've done theatre or not. So you know, I definitely lean towards New York stage-trained actors."

So what's next for husband-and-wife duo? While the couple got their start in documentaries and used non-fiction elements in their indie hit, "American Splendor," about comic book artist Harvey Pekar, they're currently shooting a narrative film about the making of another very famous documentary — the landmark early 1970s PBS series, "An American Family," which has been dubbed the very first reality TV show ever filmed, centered on the Loud family of Santa Barbara, CA. The film, titled "Cinema Verite," stars Diane Lane, Tim Robbins and James Gandolfini.

***

	Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano in Things We Want
	photo by Carol Rosegg

Best known for his nearly silent portrayal of the sullen, Nietzsche-worshipping teenager in "Little Miss Sunshine" and the wily preacher in "There Will Be Blood," Dano actually got his start as a stage actor. Even before "L.I.E." thrust him into the indie spotlight as a teenager, he had juvenile roles in Broadway productions of Inherit the Wind and A Month in the Country in the mid-1990s. In recent years, he co-starred in the Off-Broadway production of Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want, directed by Ethan Hawke. In that play, he met his current girlfriend, Zoe Kazan, who's become a regular presence on the New York stage herself (The Seagull and A Behanding in Spokane and the dawning Angels in America).

"I sort of grew up doing theatre," said Dano, dressed casually in a white and purple plaid flannel, his longish hair pulled back from his face. "And that's how I got into film, actually. But I've only done one play in the past however-many years. It was almost three years ago now."

Yet Dano said that he's eager to return to the stage, while also acknowledging the emotional and physical strains of doing eight shows a week.

"I'm potentially doing something soon, I think. I want to," Dano said. "It's just that it's a big commitment. Theatre is hard, you know. So I just want it to be something I feel really strongly about — because you kind of have to go to battle every night. You know, you really got to want to kill. You gotta feel fierce about it."

Does Dano ever get butterflies or stage fright while performing on stage in a play or with his rock band, Mook?

"I get really excited before I go on stage," Dano said. "Usually it's a good nervous. I mean, you feel like you have to pee — you really do. Or you might even feel a little sick to the stomach. But usually, it's a good thing. It means that you're going to put yourself out there. It means you feel like what you're doing is a little bit dangerous, and you might fail. I think it just makes you go harder. Then once you're out there in front of people, it's a blast. It's a rush. It's a thrill."

While Dano met Kazan acting in Things We Want, they also wrapped filming last fall on a new film, "Meek's Crossing," by maverick indie director Kelly Reichardt, who made the minimalist yet moving films "Old Joy" and "Wendy and Lucy," the latter with Michelle Williams. "Meek's Crossing," set in the mid-1800s, centers on a group of pioneers whose lives are threatened as they cross the Oregon Trail. The small-budget shoot, said Dano, was much more treacherous than he first expected.

"It was probably the hardest shoot I've ever been on," he said. "We were out in the real locations in the desert of western Oregon, and it was brutal. It was just brutal. People were getting heat-stroke one day and then frostbite the next. We had to shut down for hypothermia. Like, crazy 'Fitzcarraldo'-type of shit was going on. But in retrospect, it was awesome, and I think it could be a really good film."

"Extra Man" featurette with Paul Dano, Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman:

(Christopher Wallenberg is a Brooklyn-based freelance theatre and film journalist and frequent contributor to The Boston Globe, Playbill, American Theatre magazine and the Christian Science Monitor.)