Theatre
Danes got her start in New York City theater appearing in performances of Happiness, Punk Ballet, and Kids Onstage for which she choreographed her own dance.
In April 2000, she appeared off Broadway in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. In November of that same year, she appeared as Emily Webb in a one night only staged reading of Thornton Wilder's Our Town at All Saint's Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills. The production was staged by Bess Armstrong, who had played the mother of Danes's character on My So-Called Life. Also featured in the cast were several other My So-Called Life actors, including Tom Irwin, Devon Gummersall and Paul Dooley.
In September 2005, Danes returned to New York's Performance Space 122 where she had performed as a child. She appeared in choreographer Tamar Rogoff's solo dance piece "Christina Olson: American Model", where she portrayed the subject of Andrew Wyeth's famous painting "Christina's World". Olson suffered from muscular deterioration that left her weak and partially paralyzed. "Tamar Rogoff uses her unique body-centric methodology to explore the ideas, spirit and physicality of a woman both rejected and revered." Danes was praised for her dance skills and the acting talent that she brought to the project.
In January 2007, Danes reunited with Rogoff and Rogoff's daughter and Danes's childhood friend Ariel Flavin to perform in Performance Space 122's "Edith and Jenny". In the two person dance performance, Danes and Flavin revisited their film and dance roots: "Danes and Flavin encounter their eleven year-old selves on screen, captured in their respective film debuts, Claire as Edith in Dreams of Love, and Ariel as Jenny in Coyote Mountain. Rites of passage unfold in fragments revealing the complexities of two fictional families. The lines between screen and stage, life and art, are blurred as Edith and Jenny, Danes and Flavin, form an alliance, stepping through and beyond their films and the fates of their families."
Later in 2007, Danes made her Broadway theatre debut as Eliza Doolittle in the Roundabout Theatre Company revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, directed by David Grindley at the American Airlines Theatre.
In January 2012, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals announced that they would honor Danes as 2012 Woman of the Year.
Read more about this topic: Claire Danes
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in, and highly to be esteemed, because it is the theatre of God’s righteous Kingdom.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air: the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
—Eleonora Duse (1858–1924)
“I can get dressed earlier in the evening with every intention of going to a dance at midnight, but somehow after the theatre the thing to do seems to be either to go to bed or sit around somewhere. It doesn’t seem possible that somewhere people can be expecting you at an hour like that.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)