Will Collyer is a 2008/2009 Ovation Nominee for Lead Actor in a Musical for his work in BIG: THE MUSICAL at West Coast Ensemble .

If you’d like to add a congratulatory message for Will (or any other Nominee or Nominated Company), to the Ovation Awards commemorative poster (distributed to all nominees and all attendees at the Ceremony), click here!

As an Ovation Award Nominee, LA Stage asked Will the following questions:

What was the moment that first inspired you to pursue working in the theatre?

Very first?  I was 5.  My 8-year-old brother played a sheep (among other notable roles) in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Palo Alto Children’s Theater.  I remember sitting there in the front row, completely swept away by the magic of the show.  I wouldn’t say that moment exactly propelled me to pursue a theater career — not at that age.  All I knew was, it looked REALLY REALLY fun.  Many equally formative experiences followed that: participating in Children’s Theater shows myself when I too reached the magic cut-off age of 8; getting cast at 15 to play young Charlie in neighboring TheatreWorks’ production of Conversations With My Father; being accepted at UCLA for theater after the most nerve-wracking audition and interview of my life (my auditor had me repeat my monologue standing on my head)…. In other words, this career has been percolating in me for as long as I have the memories to recall.

What do you feel made the production you were nominated for particularly successful, either overall or for you specifically?

Big was such a fun show.  And it was a big show (pardon the descriptive), in a little space, with 16 of us singing and dancing full-out, courtesy of Christine Lakin’s unabashed choreography, on one of the more intimate stages in town.  We had seven spectacular kids in the cast to whom the audience was able to instantly connect, every night, so by the time I got on stage, ten minutes into act one, the raked seating was a sea of smiling faces — all I had to do was ride that energy and stay honest with the story and I couldn’t go wrong.  Big is happy, goofy, tender material, and the role of Josh gave me the opportunity to play everything in my bag of tricks.  Furthermore, our director, Richard Israel, has such well-honed taste, and was so innovative and at the same time simple with his staging and acting direction, that we were able to mine comic gold out of well-known sequences that could have easily become cliche.  We were able to turn the caviar spit-take, for example, so famous from the movie, into a big laugh every night.  It’s something you’ve seen a thousand times, and yet, as soon as Susan (my fantastic co-star Darrin Revitz) pulled out the caviar and began spreading it on a cracker, people would begin giggling with anticipation.  By the time I’d gagged, spit out the caviar-laden cracker into her purse (for easy clean-up) and leapt to my waiting can of Coke, the theater was howling.  So much fun, and yet such a clam and therefore potentially a groaner when you’re playing to savvy LA audiences.  That we were able to successfully merge slapstick and heart goes a long way towards explaining the success of our show.  Credit also goes to my co-star, Darrin, with whom it was so easy to create honest chemistry every performance, and our cast, who would routinely show up a half-hour before half-hour to hang out on the stage and in the house, cracking jokes and just checking in with each other.  There was a lot of magic at the El Centro Theatre this summer, and a lot of love, and I know that audiences felt that, and were part of it.

What project or projects are you currently working on?

At the moment I am in the ensemble of Parade at the Taper, where I am understudying Leo, Frankie and Rosser.  (In addition, the actors who play Frankie and Rosser have several other smaller parts that they play as well, so all in all I am responsible for 10 roles in the show).  It’s a stripped down Parade, with half the cast that was in the original Broadway production, and virtually none of the spectacle, so what’s left is Alfred Uhry’s compelling depiction of this raw piece of history and Jason Robert Brown’s chilling, beautiful score.  It’s one of my favorite pieces and I feel totally blessed to be in this extraordinary company.

What do you love most about theatre in Los Angeles?

There is so much theatre in LA, all the time, and yet for it’s vastness, the community is so remarkably supportive and interconnected.  If a person wanted to, he or she could go from show to show to show to show, without a break.  Now, a great majority of those shows aren’t jobs that pay the bills, but they are jobs that leave you artistically full, and in my experience, that’s been, in many aspects, more important than a paycheck.  It’s much easier to slog through a day-job and wait out the droughts and strikes that plague pursuance of a career in TV/film when you’re in a play that you love with a cast that becomes family and you’re consistently able to feel and live and breathe your art in that way.  There’s just nothing that compares to the collaboration of like-minded people on a labor of love.  

What’s your dream project?

I want to carry a new musical from workshop to production to a Tony statuette.  Well, first I’d like it to win an Ovation, and then a Tony.

Biography: Will is a graduate of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television where he was the recipient of the first place Carol Burnett Award and scholarship.  He has performed on stages all over Los Angeles, among them Center Theater Group (Parade and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), West Coast Ensemble (Big: the Musical), Theatre@Boston Court (Gulls and Unfinished American Highwayscape #9 & 32), VS Theater Company (Eric Larue), Reprise! (Hair, Bells Are Ringing and The Boys From Syracuse), Hollywood Bowl (Carousel), Odyssey (Kurt Weill: Songplay) and numerous workshops and readings at such venues as Pasadena Playhouse, Disney Theatricals, Southcoast Rep, Circle X, and the Academy for New Musical Theater.  Notable TV/film credits include Melrose Place, Pushing Daisies, Numb3rs, Las Vegas, Charmed, Jack & Bobby, Judging Amy, CSI: Miami, Christmas Carol (MOW) and Boston Public and numerous indies and shorts. As a composer, Will’s original musical Right Together is receiving a workshop/backers presentation in Feb ’10 at Shetler Studios in NYC.

For a full list of Ovation nominees, or for information about the Ovation Awards Ceremony on January 11th, click here!