For Andrew Durand, the community stage led to Broadway.
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If you were a theater kid in Roswell in the 1990s, you knew Roswell Village Playhouse. Tucked in the back of a shopping center on the corner of Highway 9 and Highway 92, it presented full seasons of plays for children and adults with volunteer casts of all ages. One of the many theater kids who came through the doors of the unassuming venue was Andrew Durand.
A first-time Tony Award nominee this Broadway season for Dead Outlaw, Durand’s love for theater began at age 10 when he attended a play at Roswell Village Playhouse.
“I saw all these adults and kids treating each other as equals: playing together on stage, having fun and telling stories,” says Durand, adding that he found a second home and plenty of mentors at the community theater. “I was always asking my mom to drive me to Roswell Village Playhouse. Even if I wasn’t in a show, I was there helping paint the sets or helping with costumes or selling popcorn — anything I could do to be around those people, around that magic.”
Some of his fondest memories are from the theater’s annual staging of A Christmas Carol, which he likens to spending Christmas with 70 family members.
A young Durand poses with Roswell Village Playhouse owners Jeannie and Wally Hinds. Durand says he would not be on Broadway today without their support. (Photo courtesy of Jeannie Hinds)
“Basically, anybody that wanted to be in it could be in it,” he says. “If one of the kids (in a family) was playing a Cratchit, then the whole family would come and just be in the crowd scenes at the beginning of the show.”
His own family joined him in the Dickens play, including stepsister Paige Faure, who is also a Broadway veteran, appearing now in Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends.
Continuing to chase the magic he first encountered in Roswell has led Durand to his most challenging role ever. Starring in his sixth Broadway show as the titular “dead outlaw,” the actor is practically in two different musicals. In the first, he energetically sings and runs all over the stage, and, in the second, he stands in a coffin, dead and motionless. With eyes open and feet bare, others perform around him, often rolling him around the stage.
Broadway stars Andrew Durand, left, and stepsister Paige Faure, right, pose in A Christmas Carol costumes at Roswell’s Kudzu Playhouse in 2002. (Photo courtesy of Jeannie Hinds.)
“It’s between 40 and 45 minutes of standing perfectly still, attempting not to blink,” he says. “I swallow or blink when a fellow actor walks in front of me to cross the stage or when they move me around.”
Dead Outlaw tells the bizarre and true story of Elmer McCurdy, a turn-of-the-century ne’er-do-well whose career is characterized by failed robberies, culminating in his death after his final heist on a train in 1911. When no one claims his body, the coroner begins showcasing McCurdy as a side show, with curious patrons paying to see “a real dead outlaw.”
So begins McCurdy’s decades-long “after-life” in show business as his corpse is shuffled among wax museums, films and amusement parks. Visitors to the exhibit often mistook the body for a dummy, not realizing they were seeing a real-life corpse.
“He wasn’t buried until the 1970s, when his body was found hanging in a fun house in Long Beach, California,” says Durand. For those playing along at home, this means his after-life almost doubled his actual life.
Alongside Durand’s Best Actor in a Musical nod, the show has six more Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. These honors are not a shock, given the creative team behind Dead Outlaw also created juggernaut musical The Band’s Visit, which swept the 2018 Tonys. Additionally, Dead Outlaw’s 2024 Off-Broadway premiere garnered its own nominations and critical acclaim, including a win for Durand.
The results of the latest Tony Awards will be revealed at a ceremony on June 8, though Durand admits his career has never been about chasing awards.
Andrew Durand “plays dead” for 45 minutes during every performance, while Julia Knitel, top, and other cast members perform around him. (Photo by Matthew Murphy.)
“Even up to college (at the Boston Conservatory), I never thought, ‘I’m going to be on Broadway, be a star, win Tony Awards and things like that,’” he says. “I honestly was always doing it because it was so much fun, and I loved the people.”
In his early days of performing, Durand’s involvement often hinged on the fun and collaboration he found at Roswell Village Playhouse (which later moved and became Kudzu Playhouse) and North Springs High School.
“I never really got to the Alliance (Theatre) or places like that because I just had so much fun with those people,” he says. Roswell Village Playhouse even gave him his first experience playing a dead body in Arsenic and Old Lace at age 15. On another memorable occasion, he and his father played prisoners handcuffed together in The Man Who Came to Dinner.
“Backstage, we painted blood and black eyes on each other like we had been fighting,” he recalls.
And what would 10-year-old Andrew, running around backstage at the community theater, think of seeing his older self nominated for a Tony Award some decades later?
“I think my 10-year-old self would think, ‘Well, that’s pretty cool, but is it as cool as A Christmas Carol at Roswell Village Playhouse?” Durand quips. “I’m not so sure.’”
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Sally Fuller is a theater nerd and journalist who also saw her first play as a child at Roswell Village Playhouse and never wanted to leave. Her writing has appeared in Encore Atlanta, City Lifestyle Magazine and the AJC, among others. When not writing, she works at her dream job as a mother, alongside the best husband and father in the world.
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