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• Dan Lauria lives his passion for theater The Changing Scene Dan Lauria lives his passion for theater Dan Lauria splits his year between New York and Los Angeles. "In Los Angeles I do a pilot or a couple of TV guest shots, make my money and head to New York to see what might be doing in the theater. When I need more money, it's back to L.A." This actor, starring in the two-character play "Ears on a Beatle" at the Barrington Stage Company, will only do new plays and is perpetually on the hunt for good ones. "I did do a revival of Arthur Miller's 'The Price’ with Jack Klugman recently," Lauria admitted, "but I’d do anything with that guy. He’s 81 years old, has all the money in the world, and right now he’s on the road doing ‘On Golden Pond.’ Jack loves audiences and audiences love him. When he is about to step on the stage, he always says ‘This is where the big boys play.’”
Although Lauria's national fame and hopefully his fortune came from the five years of playing the father on the critically-acclaimed TV show, "The Wonder Years," his major passion is theater. He acts, directs, produces and writes plays. For 10 years he headed a theater company in Los Angeles whose sole purpose was to encourage new playwrights. "I had a lot of help from people like Doris Roberts and Tyne Daley and Marion Ross," he said. "Their response is always immediate.” Lauria has also played major roles in a gazillion movies. A fan's Web site lists all the movies and the parts he played in them, and you have to set aside a chunk of time if you want to print all of them out. When BSC artistic director Julianne Boyd called to ask him if he would be interested in appearing in playwright Mark St. Germain's comic drama about two FBI agents who are ordered to keep tabs on the life of former Beatle John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, both anti-war activists during the height of the Vietnam War, Lauria jumped at the chance. He had workshopped one of St. Germain’s plays at his L.A. theater group and is high on his theatrical gift. "If it's his play, I’m there," he told Boyd. Lauria served in the Marines for three years during the Vietnam era, and on his return from abroad, he enrolled in graduate school at the University of Connecticut and received a master of fine arts degree in playwriting. Since then acting has literally been his life. "Speaking of Vietnam," he said, "you know all those stories you hear about how nice Tom Hanks is. (There was an appropriate pause.) Well, I'm here to tell you he’s even nicer. I don’t know him too well even though I worked on his 'Earth to the Moon’ series. I was helping out on a Vietnam veterans program and they needed some instant money. This Hollywood company had promised $150,000 to help out with the project, but the money never showed up and there was danger of the project going under. Finally, I took a chance and put a call in to Hanks. He was on the East Coast filming, but his secretary said she would give him the message. Fifteen minutes later there was a call from North Carolina and Tom wanted to know what was going on. I told him. Four hours later the check arrived. For $300,000. I don’t know if the extra money was his own but the project was saved. That is Tom Hanks.” Lauria is politically oriented with no ifs or buts. He is enraged by President George Bush's shortchanging of veterans in his budget, by the plundering of national funds in tax rebates to the rich so that there will eventually be nothing left for Medicare or Social Security and by the Washington doubletalk that supposedly represents policy. He is hopeful that "Ears on a Beatle" will go somewhere. "Some New York producers are coming to look at it," he said, "and maybe something will happen. It's a serious play with some very funny moments in it. The first half is almost straight comedy just from the actual memos that J. Edgar Hoover sent his agents.” Lauria was one of the major actors who played a role in "The Guys," a play about the heroism of the New York firemen during 9/11. The play is being done again on Sept. 11 and when the New York firemen were asked which of all the actors who played the major roles they would like to see again, they picked Dan Lauria. "I got to know some of the firemen pretty well," said Lauria. "For seven months I worked at Ground Zero every Tuesday doing whatever needed to be done. I also got to know a lot of the ironworkers, brave men, very brave men.” Just before coming east, Lauria and three friends did a run-through of a comedy he wrote. The friends are Jack Klugman, Charles Durning and Dom DeLuise. "That was one of the best evenings I ever spent," he said. "Their improvisations were so funny that I kept scribbling them down and now they're in the play.” Lauria's genes were good to him in that they gave him a face that shows honesty, concern and plain old niceness. That is one of the reasons he fits so many parts in theater, television and movies. And when you talk to him, you get the feeling that the face represents more than how he looks. The genes go all the way inside to the heart and soul. |
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