Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

Congratulations to a few old friends from Stagedoor Manor, on their latest film, TV, and theatre projects.

The Stagedoor Manor theatre summer camp in the Catskills mountains of New York has always been a great training/breeding ground for top performers and creative people, and the early 2000+ era when I worked there seems to have been a very productive period.

Firstly, Congratz to Brett Davern for his upcoming movie, American Summer. It's from the team behind the American Pie films, and has been dubbed "the American Pie version of Risky Business".

Brett Davern plays a Harvard-bound student named Alex Sperling, who spends his summer working with down-on-his-luck cousin Roger (Matthew Lillard), as they turn an empty mansion into "a home for women who belong to the world's oldest profession".

American Summer was being shopped at Cannes for distribution deals. The movie also stars Efren Ramirez (Napoleon Dynamite), George Takei (Star Trek, Heroes), and Tom Arnold.

Check out the trailer below, best line is Brett's "Mom, Dad... I'm a pimp!"
Good news also for Sebastian Stan, whose television pilot, Kings, has been picked up by NBC, as a mid-season replacement for its fall line-up.
Kings is described as a "modern-day soap loosely based on the biblical story of King David vs Goliath, in which an everyday guy rises to the seat of political power in his small town." It is written by Heroes scribe Michael Green.

The series also stars Ian McShane as the King, and Aussie actor Christopher Egan as David. Sebastian Stan previously starred in the supernatural thriller The Covenant, and featured in a couple of episodes of the CW show Gossip Girl (starring Covenant co-star and friend Chase Crawford").


Meanwhile the in-demand Skylar Astin, who's been starring as Georg in the hit Broadway musical Spring Awakening (which I managed to catch last year), is preparing for the release of his new movie Hamlet 2.

The film had a successful premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and is due for wide release in the US in late August.

Hamlet 2 is a comedy is about failed actor-turned-drama teacher Dana Marschz (British comedian Steve Coogan), who decides to write a "politically incorrect musical sequel to William Shakespeare's Hamlet"...

Skylar Astin is also part of the workshop cast for the new musical The Nightingale, by Spring Awakening's Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater.

It's based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a Chinese emperor who pines for the heart-piercing melodies of the Nightingale. Skylar will play the young emperor, with Marc Kudisch playing the older emperor.

This trio are just three of many Stagedoor alumns from recent years...

* The awesome Caitlin Van Zandt continues to win rave reviews for her portrayal of Ashlee Wolfe in the CBS daytime soap Guiding Light.

* The always busy Erich Bergen is starring as Bob Gaudio in new Las Vegas production of Jersey Boys, after spending a couple of years on the road in national tours of the musical about The Four Seasons

* The always-smiling Jonathan Lovitz is busy on the US theatre touring circuit... He's just winding up the US national tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, and next heads to Florida to play Abraham in Altar Boyz

* Proud Canadian Kyle Golemba is keeping busy with projects in the "upper North American" world of professional theatre, with The Music Man and Fuente Ovejuna

* The hilarious Daniel Evans recently made the move to New York, and is currently appearing as various kitchen implements in Broadway's Beauty & the Beast

* The very bubbly Dana Steingold (bottom right) has been touring the United States, playing the competitive little 10 year old, Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, in the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

* And the multi-talented Connor Gallagher, who previously starred in Broadway's Beauty & the Beast, is now working on the other side of the stage as a professional Choreographer