The Playgoer: Actors Studio in exile

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Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Actors Studio in exile

In case you were worried about the fate of everyone's favorite public starfucking, Bravo's "Inside the Actor's Studio" after the New School summarily dumped the Studio from its Drama program, rest assured. The show will be taking up residence instead at downtown Pace University, taping in their Michael Schimmel Center theatre. You can read the details here.

I'm curious to see what the Bravo crew will do to the space since the Pace theatre looks like a dumpy High School assembly. (Anyone who attended the final days of Tony Randall's National Actors Theatre there knows what I mean.) Sorely missed will be the New School's historic deco space (above)

The sententious James Lipton will remain a fixture, though, but will no longer be able to lord it over his New School charges. There's no word on whether he has an actual post at Pace, or whether students there will be involved at all. I guess Bravo now accepts that the odd Lipton (actor-turned-Broadway musical librettist-turned Soap Opera star) is now part of the draw (thanks to Will Ferrell, of course). Who will Jimmy fawn over this year? Sug Knight? The show long ago stopped being about anything to do with the Actors Studio or the American stage, per se. None of the guests seemed to have any Studio association or even are old enough to have heard of it! The highlight for me is when Lipton--upholding those rebellious ideals of the Actors Studio--looks up from his oversized index card to intone, "And then she was nominated for a Golden Globe," cuing thunderous applause, of course.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, this is amazing. Texas Hold Em Poker has so much to do with Katrina and this "great blog"!

Playgoer said...

Thank you, Anonymous. I will go ahead and leave that Spam on, just to preserve the contact of your joke.

Scott Walters said...

Thanks for the skewering of "Inside the Actors Studio" and its tendentious host, James Lipton. It is nice to see the human side of the various stars, but as an inside look into the acting process -- forget it!