Happy World Theater Day: Damian Lewis on Stage

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Happy World Theater Day! Let’s celebrate this beautiful day dedicated to the wonderful art form that is theater with a little walk down the memory lane to live and re-live bits and pieces of Damian Lewis’ brilliant stage career!

Damian discovers theater at a young age at Ashdown House, the boarding school he went at age eight: “Each summer we staged a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta. It was all so English. I used to sing the solos. I had a sweet treble voice.” His first ever role was a policeman The Pirates of Penzance, a Gilbert and SullivanAnd, by age 12, he had already played in 12 Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas.

Well, we don’t have pictures from these operettas but the school pic below can help us imagine our little guy on stage! Continue reading “Happy World Theater Day: Damian Lewis on Stage”

Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Pillars of the Community

It all starts with a good colleague with whom I share love for theater asking me to name my favorite male and female stage performances in 2015. Easy. It’s Lesley Manville in Ibsen’s Ghosts and Damian Lewis in Mamet’s American Buffalo (with Mark Strong in Miller’s A View From the Bridge as a close second). And what is it about these performances that make me LOVE them?  Just one word: Precision.

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Then I think about the heart-breaking performance Lesley Manville gives in Ghosts which, in fact, has brought her an Olivier Award in 2014 (I saw the play much later when it visited Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2015). I know Manville mostly from her work on big screen such as Secrets and Lies (1996), Vera Drake (2004), Another Year (2010) and Mr Turner (2014) all of which were some of my favorites in the year they were released. But I really do not know about her stage work. So I google her. And this is one of the first images I hit!

source: telegraph.co.uk
source: telegraph.co.uk

Ha! Small world. Have you heard of the saying that Brits have 10 actors? I am about to believe that! 😀 And it’s time we dig into the play! Continue reading “Throwback Thursday to Damian Lewis in Pillars of the Community”