ATWT: Van’s Dance Revolution
AS THE WORLD TURNS’s Van Hansis will be pulling double duty this December, playing good boy Luke, and taking a very different slant on the stage in an adaptation of the popular video game Dance Dance Revolution.
Soap Opera Weekly: Is Dance Dance Revolution as awesomely crazy as it sounds like it is going to be?
Van Hansis: Yes, it is. It’s this play that I workshopped three years ago at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, with an awesome director named Alex Timbers, who has his own theater company which I can’t pronounce — I don’t speak French — Les Freres Corbusier. He’s like 29 years old, and he’s already won an Obie. He’s done some really incredible shows. He has garnered a lot of attention in New York, and a couple of his shows have been taken to Los Angeles. This is a show that he wrote and directed. We were all at Williamstown three years ago, right before I started ATWT, and we did a much smaller version of it. Now it’s being brought to New York. It’s pretty awesome. It’s kind of like Death Race meets Flashdance.
Weekly: Death Race meets Flashdance?!
Hansis: Yeah. It’s set in the future, with lots and lots of foul language. (laughs) So it’s a lot of fun. It’s great to work with these guys again, who have been my friends for a really long time, and it’s great to be doing something that is so out there and something I don’t get to do on a regular basis. It’s pretty hilarious and incredibly raunchy.
Weekly: It’s got to be fun to break out and do that. You get to curse and be crazy and do the things that Luke doesn’t do.
Hansis: Exactly. Also, it’s important for me to be onstage. When you’re onstage, it helps your work on the soap. It’s a lot of fun, and I love the sense of community in theater. I try to do at least one [production] a year. This will be a really fun show. I think it will have some good response.
Weekly: I’m sure a ton of people will come to see you in it.
Hansis: If people have weak stomachs and don’t like raunchy language, then I would say to not come to this show. If you can handle some dirty words and some strange situations, then, by all means, I think [you’re] going to like it. It’s also a musical, which is weird for me, because I don’t do musicals.
Weekly: That just adds an extra layer of awesome to it for me.
Hansis: It adds an extra layer of care for me(laughs).
Weekly: You’re not into the whole dancing and singing aspect of it?
Hansis: No, I’m dancing and singing in it. I knew that would be part of it. They knew how I danced and sang, and I still am doing it (laughs). It’s so out there that it doesn’t really matter that you don’t have the strongest dancers or singers. They do have a core of 12 incredible dancers who back up the actors, who don’t really dance as much. But we all hold our own. We all do pretty well.
Weekly: As long as you’re not on roller skates like Xanadu, you’ll be okay.
Hansis: Yeah. No roller skates in this one. We do have trampolines, though!
Dance Dance Revolution runs from Dec. 3 to 20 at the Ohio Theater, at 66 Wooster Street (between Spring and Broome Streets) in New York, N.Y. Tickets are $18. Visit www.dancefreedomforever.com for more information.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.