Darren's Miscellaneous Theater Work for 2015- 2016 (Table Readings, Short-Term Projects, etc.)

The Black List Table Reads takes the best and most exciting screenplays Hollywood hasn’t yet made, and turns them into movies, for your ears. Black List founder Franklin Leonard presents a new script every month read by a rotating cast of talented actors, along with interviews from the Hollywood screenwriting community and beyond. | Link
 You can listen to the readings Darren was a part of here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Broadway.com wrote:
Darren Criss is headlining a private developmental reading of 17 Again, a musical based on the 2009 Zac Efron film, on March 6. Under the direction of Hairspray film director Adam Shankman, the Glee star will join Craig Bierko, Jackie Hoffman, George Wendt, Jennifer Damiano, Steve Rosen, Taylor Louderman, Leslie Kritzer and Andy Mientus in the New York reading, which features a score by First Date songwriters Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner and book by TV writer Marco Pennette.

[. . . ]

This closed presentation is one of multiple projects Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures currently has in development to create new works for first class productions, professional and regional tours and amateur licensing.

-Broadway.com

October 5, 2015

October 5, 2015

gleekto wrote:
Darren in Gross Indecency

Gross Indecency was really incredibly well done. Although it was a reading, because of the court room setting of the play, it felt very much like a play happening in court  (with a few more scripts around). Michael Emerson (who played Oscar Wilde) was incredibly moving, but really the whole cast was excellent.

There is lots to say about the whole thing, but I know many here would like to hear about Darren’s roles  - he had fantastic parts and was definitely a bit of a scene stealer in one of them…So a brief summary - 

So he played 3 roles - in the first trial, it was a small part of a concierge who had witnessed some of Oscar Wilde’s ‘engagements’ at the hotel. He was blushy and British and his accent was fab (my sweetie noticed how good he was at accents).

It was really in the second trial that he shone as Charles Parker - one of the boys of a ‘lesser class’ that Oscar had met and wined and dined and paid and been with - or as Charles put it - “he committed the act of sodomy on me.” Charles and three others were called as witnesses in the trial to testify against Oscar Wilde for acts of gross indecency. Charles was a totally brash, arrogant, street-smart  player - and Darren swaggered his way through the part in his white underwear (I see there are already pics). One particularly fantastic moment was when Charles was called as a witness, so Darren approaches the stand but the binder with the script (it’s a reading, so all have binders) is set to the completely wrong page.  Judith Light, who played the prosecutor, asks Charles, “Do you have any family in London?” - Darren, seeing the script is wrong, and completely in character as a smart ass - “I’ll have to think about it”, and then he flips the pages. The audience loved it. It was clearly a very fun part part to play - a bit of a comic relief asshole.

In the last trial, he played Charles again (very small role) and also a brief scene as a scandalized massage therapist who witnessed Oscar Wilde engaged in ‘acts’ with another man - noteworthy again was an excellent accent and very different vibe from the other two characters. 

So yeah, Darren was fab. Super fun to watch. And particularly fun when the wonderful Judith Light is cross examining him as a douche-y player in skimpy white underwear, in the context of a beautifully political and powerful play.

-gleekto

[HQ] Alums Joey Richter, Darren Criss, and Lauren Lopez perform at “A Very Starkid Reunion” in honor of the 100th anniversary of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the Power Center on Thursday. | Source

14 year old me is crying. 21 year old me had an incredible time with alums from her school and is so happy she got to catch up with an old friend (and also got to party with the radest people alive).
Team Starkid– thank you for being so fucking great. Can’t wait for the next time

‘A Very StarKid Reunion’ is a nostalgic must-have for fans
The latest offering from fandom’s most beloved theater troupe Team StarKid is a DVD filmed at their one-off A Very StarKid Reunion, a live concert performed in October in honor of their alma mater’s 100th anniversary.

Hypable Review wrote:Opening with the number that made them an instant internet sensation, Darren Criss leads most of the original cast of A Very Potter Musical in “Goin’ Back To Hogwarts,” in which the entrance of every character is met with wild cheers, and the sentiment “it’s great to come back to where we began” holds a special significance. This is the night’s first moment in which UMich is branded as Team StarKid’s very own Hogwarts, but it won’t be the last.

Hypable Review wrote:. . . for example, Darren Criss introduced Starship, a show he composed but wasn’t able to perform in, and described his odd, and rather sad, disconnect from the group as he was working on the show’s music while filming his first season on Glee.


For StarKid fans — especially old-school StarKid fans — the Darren Criss situation is always going to be weird, and his presence at events like this always has us heaving a sigh of relief. From what we’ve heard from the rest of the StarKid gang, that sentiment seems to extend to them, at times, too.

Hypable Review wrote:Perhaps Criss, like most of the Glee fandom, is still feeling some burnout from the show’s less-than-graceful demise, but regardless, he is a star, and he has the ambition and the resume to prove it. This is a guy who entered a hit TV show as a guest actor and who left five years later as its leading male, who recently carried a taxing one-man Broadway show (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) on his back. He’s an enigmatic solo performer, but one of my favorite things about Criss is that when he’s with Team StarKid, he never seems to pull focus. His number in the A Very Potter Sequel segment (which happens to be one of the best songs he’s ever personally penned) is as show-stopping as anything he’s ever done onstage, and yet even that still doesn’t turn the night into The Darren Criss Variety Hour.

Hypable Review wrote:
Criss is excellent at turning on the celebrity factor. He’s also excellent at turning it off. He’s, above all, adaptable, and despite the fact that he appears in this concert as one of its big draws, in the lead role of Harry, his presence feels just as expected, yet just as unremarkable, as any of the returning cast. He’s one of the gang, as happy to dance in back as lead up front, and in the best possible way, he doesn’t stand out. This isn’t new: this is a quality that fans have witnessed every time Criss has returned to perform with StarKid over the past five years, and it makes sense: he’s not competing with these people, there’s nothing to prove and nothing at stake. It’s just what he comes home to.

Poppy wrote:I would love to see that too, Jeremy!   The question is would he be a sweet clown, a goofy clown, a scary clown, an angst-ridden/sad clown, or another type of clown?