Brandon Ruckdashel (Press/features)

Tye Briggs Blog / favoritehunks.blogspot.com

2008-11-25T11:22:00.001-08:00

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Favorite Stage Hunk of the Day: Brandon Ruckdashel

If you have not heard of Brandon Ruckdashel, it is just a matter of time. Brandon may be known to some of you for his role on 'The Lair' or his beautiful and haunting performance in writer and director Maria Beatty's 'Boy In A Bathtub', but he has an impressive list of theatre credits as well.

Brandon grew up in the middle of Minnesota, but moved to Utah when in middle school. In his freshman year, he discovered drama class and for the first time he felt liked he really fit in with a group of people.

Brandon continued acting and playing sports until his acting teacher suggested he spend the summer at the North Carolina School of the Arts. He went onto East Carolina University, and after many productions working behind the scenes and on the main stage, Brandon left for New York. After a few productions in New York, including 'Ascension' (see below) Brandon headed to LA where he is currently living and working. The opportunities are starting to role in and with Brandon's talent it is impossible to imagine he will not become one of Hollywoods biggest stars. Brandon has an absolutely AMAZING web site full of info, tons and tons of pics and information. Be sure to stop by and spend some time, if your like me, when you leave you will be a huge fan of this talented, not to mention hot young talent. You can find his site HERE:

Yes Brandon has a smokin body, but the above pic is my favorite. Those eyes!

Below: Brandon as Riley in the horror TV series, "The Lair."

Below: Stills from Brandon's performance in the 2006 Off-Broadway production of Ascension. Brandon earned great reviews for his role as Lorenzo, an attractive, charismatic and dangerous dark angel who seduces a Catholic priest. Check out the Ascension Myspace PageHERE:

Some info about Brandon's early life from MostBeautifulMan.Com.

Brandon on AfterElton.com

2008-10-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Nudes Is Good News for Broadway Box-Office

Michael Portantiere

September 29, 2008

Daniel Radcliffe in promotional stills from the London production of Equus

“Daniel Radcliffe Ready for Broadway – Nude Scene and All”
--(Huffington Post)

“Harry Potter Goes Nude!”
--(CBS News).

“Onstage, Stripped of That Wizardry”
--(The New York Times)

“Daniel Radcliffe Talks About His Broadway Debut – and His Nude Scene”
--(People Magazine)

These are some examples of the headlines of the many articles that have appeared in conjunction with what is apparently the theatrical event of the decade: Daniel Radcliffe, star of the Harry Potter series of movies, headlining a revival of Peter Shaffer’s Equus.

That Radcliffe did the play in London last year and opened last week on Broadway in a transfer of that production would be news enough insofar as the star of one of the most successful franchises in film history is performing live on stage, in the flesh. But here, the phrase “in the flesh” is especially appropriate: Equus famously includes a full-frontal nude scene for Radcliffe in the role of the psychosexually tormented youth Alan Strang, who develops an erotic fixation with horses and then blinds a stable-full of them with a metal spike when his attempt to lose his virginity with a local girl fails miserably.

It’s scarcely an exaggeration to say that Radcliffe’s nude scene has caused as much excitement as would be engendered if Ethel Merman could be brought back to life and signed to star in new Broadway musical. (Of course, that’s not the same situation, since presumably few would want to see her naked.)

Throughout his journey in Equus, from the media circus surrounding the London run to the slightly less breathless coverage of the Broadway engagement, Radcliffe has maintained his equanimity and a great sense of humor about exposing his private parts.

He recently confided in The New York Times that he has been experiencing what he called the “Michelangelo’s David Effect” onstage, explaining: “[David] wasn’t very well endowed, because he was fighting Goliath. There was very much of that effect. You tighten up like a hamster. The first time it happened, I turned around and went, ‘You know, there’s a thousand people here, and I don’t think even one of them would expect you to look your best in this situation.’”

At least since Hair and Oh! Calcutta! in the late 1960s, nudity has been part of the fabric (if that’s the correct word!) of Broadway. For a few decades thereafter, it seemed that men and women were more or less equally represented among onstage nudists – but in recent years, the scale has definitely tipped towards the male.

An informal survey conducted by The New York Times in 2005 determined that in the roughly 25 productions over the previous 15 years that had featured full frontal nudity, approximately 40 men had appeared in the altogether as compared to only about 10 women. There are a number of reasons for this shift, but it’s no doubt primarily due to the fact that gay men (and straight women) represent a very large percentage of the New York theatergoing audience, and many people in this subset can be expected to reflexively respond to word of onstage nakedness by whipping out their credit cards and calling Telecharge or Ticketmaster.

High-profile cases of female nudity in the theater are certainly not unknown in our time, witness Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room or Kathleen Turner in The Graduate. Still, when it comes to disrobing for the ticket-buying public, it’s most often the men who soldier forward.

A very short list of recent Broadway productions in which one or more male performers bared all (or most) of their bodies includes Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion, Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, Douglas Carter Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed, and the musical The Full Monty. Stanley Tucci was briefly nude in a revival of McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune – oh, and so was his co-star, Edie Falco. Going a little further back, a pre-stardom Jude Law could be seen naked on Broadway in Indiscretions.

Tom Everett Scott and Johnny Galecki in The Little Dog Laughed

It would be unfair to lump all of these shows together, since their nude scenes range from the dramatically chilling, horrifically violent horse-blinding sequence in Equus to the utterly gratuitous nakedness of the actors in Love! Valour! Compassion! And sometimes, nudity is intended simply to express humanity at its most elemental level – as in Hair, which had a very successful Public Theater revival in Central Park this summer. (That production will transfer to Broadway later this season.)

Daniel Radcliffe and other actors who doff their clothing onstage are smart enough to acknowledge that doing so helps sell tickets. Take for example Hunter Parrish, a star of the hit Showtime series Weeds, who’s currently playing the central role of Melchior in the Broadway musical Spring Awakening.

In a promotional video for the show that’s easily found online, Parrish tells his fans: “You guys gotta come. If you’re into Weeds and the intellectual writing there and the artful aspects of how that’s put together, [Spring Awakening] is quite spectacular of a show. And it’s live, and you get to see my butt. So, there you go!”

While bare butts (etc.) almost always mean big box-office, sometimes the opposite is the case. One theory for the relatively brief run of the Broadway musical The Full Monty is that straight men stayed away in droves because they were put off by the title and the ad campaign, which stressed the “naked men” hook of the show despite the fact that the principal actors were fully exposed for only about two seconds in the finale. (Even then, audience perusal of their private parts was made difficult by a skillfully designed and executed lighting effect).

Patrick Wilson in The Full Monty

Lesson for producers: If a large percentage of your show’s target audience is presumed to be straight men, ixnay on the enis-pay. Is anyone surprised that there are no naked men on view in Jersey Boys or Spamalot?

Otherwise, it’s great business sense to bring on buff guys in the buff. Funny story: Terrence Howard appeared nude at the top of the recent Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and though he was standing upstage with his back to the audience, that was enough to cause an overjoyed female audience member at one performance to shout, “This is what I paid my money for!”

If nudity has been common on Broadway over the past 40 years or so, it’s even more common Off-Broadway, in scores of shows ranging in quality from Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby to amiable fluff (pardon the expression!) like Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.

There has also been a subset of shows marketed specifically to gay men of a certain age, giving them the opportunity to see taut, young male bodies nude (or semi-nude) onstage. For a while, the Cute Boys in Their Underpants series played to appreciative niche audiences at the Sanford Meisner Theater. (One of the most amusingly titled entries in the series was Cute Boys in Their Underpants Go To France.)

But the long-run champ of this genre is Naked Boys Singing, which also wins the "Truth in Theater Advertising Award" hands down. However, it’s fascinating to note that, while this show’s audience was initially made up almost exclusively of gay men, word is that it now consists mostly of bachelorette parties!

The cast of Naked Boys Singing

Nudity can be and has been used to sell the most unlikely of shows. Just recently, New York theatergoers were treated to “a daring, completely nude interpretation of Walt Whitman's epic Leaves of Grass" at The Cell on West 23rd Street. Conceived and directed by Jeremy Bloom, the show featured “a chorus of 25 diverse and fully nude performers.”

In a press release, Bloom insisted that “staging nudity in the context of Whitman's text is the most honest approach,” because "each succeeding line, passage, and turn of phrase celebrates the bare human form as an intersection of nature and industry." A more cynical observer might put it this way: If you want to have a prayer of selling tickets to a poetry reading, you’d damn well better make sure that all of the actors are naked.

Just how much of a positive effect can male nudity have on the financial success of an off-the-radar show when word gets out? Consider Ascension, a play that ran Off-Off-Broadway in 2006.

Brandon Ruckdashel in Ascension

The three-character, low-budget production was scheduled to play for three weeks, but the run was extended and the ticket price tripled when Anita Gates reviewed it for The New York Times. Though she praised the show in general, it was almost certainly her commentary on the nudity of 23-year-old star Brandon Ruckdashel – who, in her estimation, possesses "the intense blond good looks of a young Brad Pitt with a soupçon of James Dean" – that caused all that commotion at the box office.

Says Ruckdashel, who may be seen this season on here! TV’s The Lair and who is currently filming the Cinemax series Co-ed Confidential, “I think nudity on stage is fine. I don’t suggest making a habit of it, but I think it can be part of the art. In Ascension, the nudity wasn’t vulgar; it’s natural that, after sex, two individuals would be lounging around nude. It was never, like, ‘Okay, let’s have a nude scene.’ The playwright did a great job of setting it up. Did it boost our ticket sales? Yeah, it probably did. We had the trench-coat Mafia in the audience, that’s for sure! From the time that the review came out, we sold out the rest of the initially scheduled three-week run in six hours flat. But I think what did it was the fact that the Times reviewed us at all. It still has the power to come in, anoint a show, and make it a hit.”

Well, maybe. There’s no way of determining how much the Times review would have spiked Ascension’s ticket sales if Gates hadn’t happened to mention that the play featured a gorgeous young man totally naked, just as no one can say whether the demand for Equus tickets would be less frenzied if the public wasn’t aware that Daniel Radcliffe goes starkers in that show.

Generally speaking, it seems that most theater artists have little or no problem with onstage nudity, but they are understandably miffed when the press and/or the public focus on that aspect of a show above all else.

Peter Shaffer, the venerable author of Equus, has made no secret of his displeasure at some of the press reaction to Daniel Radcliffe’s nudity in his play. “Childish, absolutely childish and hateful,” Shaffer told AfterElton.com at the opening night party for the Broadway production. “All they could to talk about was his c*ck. It was ludicrous — as if I was writing porn and Daniel was latching onto a pornographic event. ‘Harry Potter waves his other wand.’ Is that all they could say about our attempt? They should respect people who are trying to do good work.”

Perhaps the last cogent word on this hot-button issue should be given to Drama Desk Award-nominated actor Vince Gatton, who has appeared in his birthday suit in three separate Off-Broadway shows, including the gay comedy Party. “One of the things about Party was that it was more funny than sexy,” Gatton remarked when I interviewed him in 2002.

Vince Gatton (right) and John Kevin Jones in an Off-Off-Broadway production of
The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told

“As I said at the time: If you wanted a genuine turn-on, you could pay a lot less money to rent a video — or to rent certain boys — than you'd pay for a ticket to our show. The shows that have involved nudity that I was not interested in doing were the ones that aimed to be a turn-on for the audience. If that's the goal, go find a prostitute and leave me alone! I hope I have other skills to offer. And there are certainly guys with better bods than me, guys with six-pack abs and big arms and all of that. If what you're looking for is visual hot-cha, you'd better try to find it elsewhere.”

LA CITYBEAT - Cover

2008-08-31T12:58:00.001-07:00

Brandon Ruckdashel (“Lair,” www.brandonruckdashel.com) is sometimes wearing a button-up men’s shirt by UNIF,
when we can keep it on him, price on request.

ChanVillager 2008

2008-08-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

Students in Mrs. Beard’s
and Mrs. Glynn’s classes
had a celebrity moment two
weeks ago when Chanhassen
Elementary alumnus Brandon
Ruckdashel stopped in.
The now 25-year old was in
town for an audition at the
Guthrie Theatre, a visit
with his family—his parents
live in Chaska—and a
visit to his former school to
say hello to the two teachers
who were among those who
encouraged him to pursue
his dream to act. He brought
a stack of headshots to autograph
and hand out to students,
and talked about his
life as a working actor who
splits his time between New
York and Los Angeles. He
hasn’t yet heard about the
Guthrie audition. The play
is called, “The Secret Fall
of Constance Wilde,” and
is scheduled to run May 31
through July 11. The audition
went well, but Ruckdashel
doesn’t obsess over
it. “My approach is to forget
it, and then be surprised if I
get the phone call,” he said.
“Still, it was great to be
considered, and if I don’t
get this play, there are always
other projects at the
Guthrie, and at least I met
some people there and now
they know who I am. Maybe
I’ll be right for another part
in the future.” He owes his
ability to stay grounded,
focused and positive to his
parents Meg and Randy.
His mother Meg credits
his poise and aptitude for
networking as something
he was born with. It’s come
in handy as an actor who
does lots of auditions. At
25, Ruckdashel has already
enjoyed success by receiving
a glowing review in the New
York Times for his fi rst Off
Broadway appearance
in the edgy comic drama,
“Ascension.” The role was
especially challenging
for the young actor as he
played many of his scenes
nude. Yikes! He prepared
his parents who came to see
the last performance. “He
did a really a fabulous job
in ‘Ascension.’” Meg Ruckdashel
said. “Still, there are
some thing that as a mom
and dad you don’t really
want to see,” she allowed
with a laugh, “but he did
a great job.” Since then
Ruckdashel has appeared
in several fi lms, done more
theatre in New York and Los
Angeles, shot TV commercials
in South Korea, and
has a regular role in the
second season of a vampire
series “Lair” on the “Here”
cable TV network.
Q: Does your success
surprise you?
A: I’ve had a lot of success,
but it’s been a long journey. A
lot of the projects I’ve done
have been risky but in the
end, they’ve been excellent
opportunities. Somewhere I
read, “You have to fall if you
want to fl y.” You’ve got to fail
if you want to succeed.
Q: What did you talk
about with the Chan Elementary
students?
A: That if you believe in
yourself, you can do anything
you want to do. As long
as you believe in yourself, you
can make it happen. I always
think, “I will be booked. I will
be on stage.” And my parents
have been so supportive.
Q: Is it diffi cult to maintain
such focus in sunny
L.A.?
A: You have to have a work
ethic to succeed in this business.
It’s interesting out here.
It’s easy to get to beach, it’s
always warm. It’s seductive
and easy to fall off, skip an
audition because you want to
go surfi ng instead. You have to
know when to say no, that this
(acting) is what is important
right now.
To learn more about Brandon
Ruckdashel, visit his Web
site at www.brandonruckdas
hel.com
— Unsie Zuege

ChanVillager 2006

2008-08-12T19:48:00.001-07:00

Follow Spot - April 2008

2008-04-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

Follow Spot

by Michael Portantiere

A BODY WITHOUT A HEAD

No, it's not the title of a new splatter film playing down at the multiplex. A Body Without a Head is a much more lyrical, non-violent entertainment, a "theatrical fable" written and directed by George R. Carr. Running April 28-May 2 at Manhattan Theatre Source, the piece is a staged presentation of poems by Carr that were originally published in a collection with sketches by his brother, the late Zack Carr III, who served as right-hand-man to living-legend designer Calvin Klein for more than 25 years.

The poems were written during a trip to St. Tropez and were inspired by the island's namesake, Saint Torpes, a Roman gladiator who was beheaded for refusing to renounce his spiritual beliefs. Set on "a moonlit beach where 12 souls...find comfort in the darkness and each other," A Body Without a Head is said by the author to be intended for anyone, anywhere who at anytime has lost his head to love.

Although the Torpes character doesn't appear until the final few moments of the hour-long show, Carr felt it imperative to have a magnetic, beautiful presence in the part -- and he was understandably shaken when the actor originally cast had to bow out due to another commitment. That's when the gods of the theater smiled on the company.

"Last year," Carr relates, "I was introduced to an actor named Brandon Ruckdashel, who was in a play called Ascension Off-Broadway. I saw him in that, and he was wonderful." Carr made it a point to keep him in mind for future projects, but Ruckdashel soon moved to Los Angeles and became so involved in building a career there that he was unavailable for New York theater work. Or so it seemed...

The story of Ruckdashel's career arc is as interesting as any play or musical -- and, in fact, calls to mind the plots of several plays and musicals. Less than a year after coming to New York at age 22, he was cast in Ascension as Lorenzo, a teenager who may or may not have been sexually abused by a Catholic priest. That tiny-budget production's scheduled three-week run was extended -- and its ticket prices tripled -- in response to the frenzy that was created when Anita Gates of The New York Times raved about Ruckdashel's acting, wrote that he possessed "the intense blond good looks of a young Brad Pitt with a soupçon of James Dean," and also happened to mention that he had a full-frontal nude scene in the show.

Flash forward one year: Following critical acclaim for his performance in the title role of the L.A. premiere of the musical Twist, Ruckdashel has lately been in the thick of indie film and television work. His highest-profile project thus far is a featured role in HERE! TV's gay vampire series The Lair, in which he'll be seen this fall. George Carr wanted him for A Body Without A Head in the worst way, but friends patiently pointed out that Ruckdashel would almost certainly not be available to fly to New York on very short notice for a one-week run in an Off-Off-Broadway showcase. Carr made contact anyway -- and Ruckashel's first words to him were, "When do you want me there?"

The cast of A Body Without a Head also includes Courtney Allen, James Edward Becton, Sarah Doudna, Matt Drago, Olivia Julien, Brian Karim, Catherine Kjome, Terrence Michael McCrossan, Barbara Mundy, John Van Ness Philip, and Steven Seidel. The piece is very much an ensemble effort, but Ruckdashel's role can be seen as its emotional center, and Carr is thrilled at this completely unexpected casting coup. "What a wonderful happening it is to have Brandon as our Torpes," he enthuses. "It's a gorgeous part, and he owns it." For more information, visit www.theatresource.org.

********************

EDGE Magazine April 2008

2008-04-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

Taking Risks with Brandon Ruckdashel
by Kay Bourne
EDGE Contributor
Friday Apr 11, 2008

When Brandon Ruckdashel made his off-Broadway debut two years ago in the comic drama "Ascension," he got the kind of notice from the New York Times any young actor would envy. "The 23-year-old Mr. Ruckdashel is making his Off Broadway debut and it is a stunning one. This is partly because he has the intense blond good looks of a young Brad Pitt with a soupçon of James Dean.

"But Mr. Ruckdashel’s performance," the review continued, "is also noteworthy because his Lorenzo vibrates with the smug and nonchalant power of youth."

In the play it wasn’t long before his character was seducing a priest with the words "God’s not here now. It’s just you and me," and taking his clothes off. (Full-frontal.) Yet such edgy roles are typical for the actor, whose next is opposite porno superstar Jenna Jameson, who is making the move to legit films in such titles as "Zombie Strippers" in theaters next Friday.

Currently the photogenic Ruckdashel’s in front of the cameras for the part of Riley, a new character for the popular cable series "The Lair," seen on the subscription cable network heretv. Edge reached him by phone in L.A., home to the studio for the show.

Set for the most part in a private gentleman’s club operated by vampires who lure gorgeous young men to their lair for a feeding frenzy -- and other delicious moments -- the story-line follows a young journalist’s investigation into the horrific discovery of bodies drained of their blood buried in shallow graves near the small town where he works.

The Riley episodes - and there will be more than one show devoted to Ruckdashel’s character - take the "Lair" story to a different locale. While Ruckdashel was sworn to secrecy about the details, the initial episode begins on a lonely highway where Riley has stopped to chance a belt on his car. Along comes a hitchhiker, Jan.

Controversial roles have dogged the easy-on-the-eyes Ruckdashel, even back as far as when he was a junior in high school when he was cast as Judas Iscariot in a production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" in Lynchburg, Virginia. The role came to the young actor at a time when his family had just moved the city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, (coincidently Lynchburg was the hometown to late Carl Anderson who won awards for his portrayal of the character on Broadway and in the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical.).

The small city, as it happens, was also home to Jerry Falwell who led a mega church there. The late evangelical Christian pastor and televangelist expanded the Moral Majority to the Moral Majority Coalition which opposes, among other things, state recognition and acceptance of homosexuality, the Equal Rights Amendment, and abortion.

Falwell was also opposed to the story-line in "Jesus Christ Superstar" on a convoluted theological basis which more or less complains that the plot characterizes the indecisive Judas as a pawn of God. Anyway, Falwell tried to shut the show down by discouraging attendance, however, his admonitions would seem to have had the opposite effect, as, according to Ruckdashel, the musical played to packed houses for two weeks in an auditorium that seats 1,400.

Ruminating back on the hoopla, Ruckdashel says that it dawned on him at age 16 that by giving audiences a chance to evaluate philosophical arguments for themselves, art provides checks and balances in a society.

It’s also freed him as an actor to leave things up in the air when portraying a character. For example, when he played the young seducer of a priest in "Ascension," people sometimes asked him afterwards whether his character was going to go on to live a gay life, a query he’d suggest they decide for themselves.

"I felt it was important to let the character’s future be completely open to their interpretation," he explained.

Having grown up in a Minneapolis suburb, his family moved to Utah his freshman year in high school, and the next to Lynchburg, where at a suggestion of a high school drama teacher, he spent a summer at the North Carolina School of the Arts intensive acting program. "That summer was the most amazing summer of my life," he wrote on his web biography. "I had finally found my home."

Senior year in high school, Ruckdashel was awarded "Best Actor in Virginia 2000" for his performance in the title role of "Pippin" the popular Stephan Schwartz musical. By now, firmly committed to acting as a career, Ruckdashel entered East Carolina University as a musical theater major. Four years later he headed to New York.

He hadn’t been there but three weeks when by chance he met and spent an evening with Schwartz, whose theatrical genius and knack for reinvention Ruckdashel greatly admires.

The young actor had been invited to the press night of the new version of the satirical review "Forbidden Broadway" by a friend. That led to his going to the after party at show’s creator Gerald Alessandrini’s apartment. While mixing and mingling, Ruckdashel noticed a man sitting off to one side by himself and asking who he was, learned that it was Mr. Schwartz. After introductions and a bit of conversation, they ended up planning to meet for martinis the next week.

Schwartz’s Broadway sensation "Wicked" was nearing its 1,000 performance mark, when the young hopeful and the legend sat down for drinks. Two years later, the composer’s observations about "approaching art as organic and ever changing" stay fresh in Ruckdashel’s memory. For example, long after "Pippin" was a successful Broadway show, Schwartz had seen a regional theater production outside London which revised the ending. He liked the innovation so well, he wrote an alternate conclusion to "Pippin," leaving it up to directors to decide which ending they wish to use.

"It’s a sign of a really intelligent artist to let other artists work their magic, and it’s also a sign of supreme confidence," comments Ruckdashel.

The young actor found Schwartz to be "very much a listener," wanting to know about Ruckdashel’s experiences in the theater. Mr. Schwartz advised him "to keep pushing because it’s never going to be easy."

Initially in New York, Ruckdashel found work in films appearing in such titles as Ivan Reitman’s "My Super ex-Girlfriend." He also played the lead Virgil, a naïve young man caught up in the decadent 1920s Parisian demimonde, in the feature film "Virgil" by German director Maria Beatty. In a change of pace, he played the lead Young Charly, a troubled young American soldier in Vietnam in Reeves Lehman’s biographical film "The Landscaper’s Daughter." He also has a prominent role in the upcoming feature film "One Of My Kings."

During his New York stint he ventured out to Hackensack, New Jersey playing the lead character Hotdog in a new show which spoofed beach parties. "Surf’s Up" inaugurated the New Teaneck Theater’s 10th season.

Back in the city, he began to work with photographers, among them famed Latino fashion and celebrity cameraman Jo Lance, who at that point in time was hot off of shooting the cover of "Cosmopolitan." Brandon also worked with Charles Beckwith, Reed Massengill, Derek Von Oss, Troy Phillips, Tony Jones, Ken Jones, Jon Malinowski, Jonathan Whitney, and Rick Shellhouse.

What does a established photographer gain from having newbie Ruckdashel as his muse? "You show up and allow him to create his art around you without complaint."

Ruckdashel said that his interest was the skill he’d gain; "I realized early on that part of the business is image based. Being in front of the camera, acting in movies, you have to understand the shot you’re doing and vary your performance according to how they’re shooting."

Having relocated to Los Angeles, Brandon found his first role on the West Coast on the stage, as the title character in the musical drama "Twist" at the Avery Schreiber Theater, which ran the month of this past December. Again the actor got excellent critical response. The show interweaves Victorian erotica, dark comedy, and gender bending into an extension of Charles Dickens’ novel "Oliver Twist," re-imagining Oliver as the classic tale plots his hazardous childhood searching for love, but also driven by physical desire.

"This is not your mother’s ’Oliver Twist,’" Ruckdashel told Frontiers Magazine at the time of the show’s opening. "I think most people think of Twist as a child. My Twist is a budding young man exploring both his dark and light sides ... There is bondage, kink, ad, of course, a bit of an exploration of Oliver’s masochistic side. But what I’m drawn to most about this character is that he is still exploring and finding out who he is as a person, a position I also find myself in."

Alexandra Billings, a transgendered actress and cabaret singer played Fagin. One reviewer called it "good, dirty, campy fun," but went on to praise the show for being in the spirit of Dickens.

In the next few days Ruckdashel begins shooting on "National Debt" with porn icon Jenna Jameson. Ruckdashel describes the 3-character film (Brandon, Jameson, and another woman) as "a webepisodic comedy." Beyond that skimpy description he couldn’t go -- he hasn’t seen the script yet!

Frontiers - December 2007

2007-12-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

A New
Twist

Meet
Brandon Ruckdashel
an acclaimed, rising
young actor with a
sexy take on the
famous Dickens
pickpocket

by Jonathan Riggs

FRONTIERS: Your very first acting role was as Westley in a high school play adaptation of The Princess Bride.

BRANDON RUCKDASHEL: Honestly, it was one of my favorite movies growing up. We actually staged the entire performance throughout the auditorium using stairs as the great cliffs and small sets within the audience for the different stages in the journey. I always liked playing with swords growing up so I was allowed to stage the sword fights.

What do you miss most about your hometown?

The snow and cold [Laughs]. I loved Minnesota. Growing up in the Midwest gives you a certain perspective on the practical. By the time I hit college though, I had already spent two years in Utah and two years in Virginia. People are different all across America, and I had the pleasure of experiencing that firsthand.

It must have taken some guts to pack your bags and move to New York, fresh out of school, to pursue acting.

New York is wild. I loved every second of it. I think some people are just meant to live in the big city and gravitate towards it.

Let's talk about the new Drama Desk nominated and award winning pop-rock musical that you're starring in: Twist.

This is not your mother's Oliver! [Laughs] I think most people think of Twist as a child. My Twist is a budding young man exploring both his dark and light sides. Many of the Disney-like qualities have been stripped out, and many in this cast feel that this is closer to the original book.

Except with a sexy, shirtless Oliver and Fagin as a male dominatrix, right?

Yes [Laughs] There is a bondage kink, and, of course there's a bit of an exploration of Oliver's masochistic side. But what I'm drawn to most about this character is that he is still exploring and finding out who he is as a person, a position I also find myself in.

For your Off-Broadway debut as a dark angel in Ascension, you got rave reviews, including some that compared you to Brad Pitt, Marlon Brando, and James Dean.

That blew my mind! They are my idols. I want to be part of their heritage of realism in the theater.

When you're not working, what's your favorite hobby?

Photography. There's something about capturing a frame of beauty that keeps me going.

What's a good cause that's dear to your heart?

Charities such as Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS. They're important to me because they allow us to use the stage not only for the public's pleasure but also for making the public aware of some of the challenges that face us all as human beings.

East Carolina University - Revue Summer 2007

2007-06-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

Startribune - 2006

2006-11-12T19:35:00.000-08:00