In just a few short weeks Joe Manganiello (Alcide Herveaux) will make a return to the stage in the Yale Repertory Theatre production of A Streetcar Named Desire from September 20-October 12, 2013. The Tennessee Williams play will have Joe stepping into the role of Stanley Kowalski, one he last played in 2008 before he became everyone’s favorite werewolf on True Blood. The decision to do the play came out of a need to express his creativity. Manganiello is a classically trained actor with a BFA from Carnegie Mellon so as much as he loves Alcide, the need to do a play is understandable:
“It’s just, well, “Sometimes all I’m being asked to do is rip my shirt off and growl. “Honestly, it’s been tricky because this past year, I’ve been shooting one or two scenes an episode, which means I’m acting two or three days a month. It’s easy to not feel like an actor. I have to get my creativity out somehow.”
Having played Stanley before, Joe says he knows the play inside and out. But returning to him after five years, the actor admits he’s excited to see where the character takes him this time around. A Streetcar Named Desire his favorite play and looking back on it now in the age of shows like Breaking Bad or Mad Men where it’s familiar to see characters living in a gray area is exciting because Tennessee Williams already did it with this play in 1947:
“Everyone knows someone like these characters — the aging beauty, the abused spouse and this Jungian shadow form of a man. You don’t agree with the choices they make, but you get it. And what’s really amazing, on any given night, it depends on the performance as to who the audience is going to side with. There’s so much talk now about how the protagonists on cable TV are anti-heroes who live in a gray area, be it Don Draper on ‘Mad Men’ or Walter White on ‘Breaking Bad.’ People talk about this as if it’s some kind of new thing, but Tennessee Williams did it in 1947, and I think did it better than anybody. Stanley Kowalski is still the quintessential, top-of-the-mountain male role in American drama.”
And no, Joe isn’t intimidated by the fact that he’s taken on a role that was once occupied by Marlon Brando for the iconic Elia Kazan film. While he respects Brando, Joe’s Stanley is going to be different in his way and something totally his own. This also is not Joe’s first time playing someone a little unstable. In drama school, he admits that he got all of crazy, out there parts. One such role in John Guere’s Lydie Breeze prompted him to shave his head and go without the fake tooth he has as a result of a baseball accident as a kid.
Joe is happy to jump back into these intense theater roles and isn’t afraid to get wild or raw. Playing Alcide is a great experience for Joe and it pays the bills but it isn’t all he wants to be. Case in point, Joe and his brother Nicholas formed a production company and are in the process of a making a documentary about a male stripper in Dallas. Manganiello starred in Magic Mike last year and the experience prompted him to capture the reality of male stripping:
“The real-life ‘Magic Mike. It’s going to blow people’s minds. It’s one of those docs where we’re inside this subculture and it’s fun, flashy, marketable, and then, wow, it just takes this turn into so much heart and substance. I don’t think there’s going to be a dry eye in the house.”
While he’s hoping to get the film accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, Joe also has his fitness book Evolution coming out at the end of the year that is also part memoir and includes a forward by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Manganiello has been very open about his struggles in the past including alcoholism. This month he’ll celebrate 11 years sober:
“[The Book is] about removing excuses from the past, so you can set up a plan to move forward and change your life. talk about the things that I had to overcome in order to get to where I am today. Physically, but also mentally and spiritually.”
To read more of this interview click here. To learn more about A Streetcar Named Desire and buy tickets click here.
Source: NY Post.com- “Joe Manganiello leads the pack”
Image Credit: Randal Slavin
