Christopher Orth playing Danny

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a local actor, director, and theater teacher. I love being involved in theater from all sides; onstage, backstage, and from the audience. I’ve worked heavily within children’s theater helping to train, teach, and inspire the younger generations to explore the theatre and currently work with First Stage’s Theater Academy.

What attracted you to this show?

This show takes a hard look at racism and sexuality; it is a show that everyone should see and will hopefully walk away thinking about the conversations in it. These are all flawed characters, some more than others, and are facing discussions that aren’t strictly black and white answers. This is a show that our communities need to see and think on, and hopefully learn something from it.

How do you feel about your character?

Danny is heavily flawed, while not a villain per say he is the main source of antagonism throughout the show. He is a character that struggles to understand people different from him and manages on more than one occasion to put his foot in his mouth in the process. He is a difficult character to play because of his faults, especially when myself as the actor does not agree with his outlooks in life. He is a character that seems extreme and yet is also someone we all know, someone whose opinions and ideas are heard in our communities no matter how liberal they may be. He is a liberal, he has massively flawed ideas of race and sexuality, and frightening as it may seem, we all may see a bit of ourselves in him.

What would you like the audience to take away from this show?

This is a show that the audience should walk away from thinking, and maybe a bit uncomfortably. We’ve heard everything in this show before, but have we stepped up to stop or correct the mistaken words? The audience should leave wanting to be and do better themselves, and to do better in our communities. We sometimes wear labels like “liberal” or “gay”; and think that that stops us from also being able to be “racist”; but those words are not barriers, we all need to do better.