After just one reading rehearsal, Alessandra Mesa wowed a star-studded audience at The Lee Strasberg Creative Center, performing The Upside Down Man by John Patrick Shanley, alongside Alec Baldwin last night.
Mesa delivered a tour de force reading of the first of five one-act plays by Shanley in the world premiere of Outcasts, benefitting Baldwin’s alma mater. Mesa and fellow Outcasts performers Rebecca De Mornay and Jamie Hector are also alumni of The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. Audience members marveled at the post-show reception about The Upside Down Man plot twist that followed a psychological inquiry into a sort-of-first date at a mediocre wine bar.
Baldwin was the impetus for the charity event hosted by Broadway and television actor and singer Ivan Hernandez, who serenaded the crowd between plays, beginning with a feisty rendition of Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads, accompanied by the Matt Wilson Band.
“My acting career literally began at the Strasberg Institute on 15th Street with Geoffrey Horne and Marcia Haufrecht,” said Baldwin. “I will always be grateful that I began my career here. Strasberg gave me a technique built upon a foundation of truth. Among the great playwrights working today, John Patrick Shanley’s writing, with both the humor and the drama marbled together, demands a focus and agility that I acquired largely through Strasberg. I have long admired Shanley’s remarkable work and I am grateful for the opportunity to celebrate that work while benefiting my theatrical alma mater.”
The nonprofit organization is dedicated to nurturing emerging artists, developing new theater works, and preserving the archives of Lee Strasberg, the “father of Method acting in America.” Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski invented the technique in the early 1900s, and Strasberg and other members of The Group Theatre developed an interpretation of Method in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. While Stanislavski’s later work focused on a balance of the actor’s imagination or inner thoughts and physical action within a character’s circumstances, Strasberg emphasized channeling the actor’s personal emotional memories to create a performance.
“This is inspired theater. Yesterday we celebrated Lee Strasberg’s 124th birthday. I want to thank everyone involved, and that unsolicited phone call from Alec Baldwin who offered to do this fundraiser with John Patrick Shanley and all these amazing actors,” said Victoria Krane, president of the Lee Strasberg Creative Center.
Explaining the title, Shanley said: “Each of these new pieces gives voice to the overlooked, the unheard, the exiled among us—the true outcasts. It’s a challenging and exciting evening featuring actors who are fearless in their work.”
The actors were clearly up for exceeding that challenge.
Fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm were abundantly stated by Jeff Garlin and Susie Essman reuniting as husband and wife for The Bonnet, which delivered spicy laughs about the sex lives of married couples and adultery.
Imagine Diane Morgan as Philomena Cunk but focusing on lesbian repression and you’ll understand the singular comic styling of Ivette Dumeng, who hilariously executed sexual insecurity and awkwardness alongside Debra Messing, a housepainter who gave more than a cost calculation in The Estimate.
Perhaps the raciest play of the evening, Sidney Williams, Hector, and Erick Betancourt took a deep emotional dive into homosexuality, pedophilia, suicide, morality, and the anguish of lost love and betrayal in Heartbreak.
Baldwin closed out the night with a quirky reading of Last Night in the Garden I Saw You paired with De Mornay. The two on-again, off-again lovers – De Mornay’s character drunken and unhappily married to a rich man flirting with Baldwin’s laissez faire attitude about career and personal finance – shared excellent on stage chemistry.
Guests included Meg Ryan, Lee Fryd, Sharon King Hoge, LaVon Kellner, Eleanora Kennedy, Ellie Manko, Gillian McCain, Katharine McEwan, Kathy Roeder, David Strasberg, Lindsey Strasberg, Scarlett Strasberg, Sari Tracht, Desiree Von la Valette, and Roberta Wallach.