After being away from the stage for 25 years, Russ Weiss of West Windsor has been making his way back to the footlights during the last few years. He portrays a wise old cowboy in Kelsey Theater’s upcoming production of “Bus Stop.” “It’s a long time between engagements,” says Weiss, who has been living at Village Grande for close to a year. The show opens Friday, October 16, with an opening reception following the performance.
A mix of comedy and drama, the play revolves around a weather-enforced layover in a small town diner outside Kansas City. The play, written by William Inge, opened on Broadway in 1955 and ran for 478 performances. The 1956 film version starred Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O’Connell, and Eileen Heckart.
Weiss, born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, began acting during his high school years. His first appearance on stage was playing a British colonel during WWII in a play at an area community center. “I distinctly remember having lots of butterflies when I walked onto stage, but they flew off as soon as I delivered my first lines correctly,” he says. “This both surprised and delighted me.”
He also appeared in his high school’s senior class play, “The Happiest Millionaire,” a story about a rich family. “I remember thinking it was pretty lame and made a point not to see the Disney movie when it came out later,” Weiss says. With the aid of multiple scholarships he graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University with a double major in physics and English. “They had an outstanding theater department that put on some first class plays but I was intimidated by the drama majors and did not participate in theater,” Weiss says.
As a graduate student majoring in English at SUNY at Buffalo, he returned to acting, appearing as Judge Hathorne in a production of “The Crucible.” He also did a one-man, one-act play as General Grant in James Thurber’s “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox.” Weiss became a Thurber fan after reading his classic short story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” in a high school English class. After graduating from Buffalo with a master’s in English, he began a career as technical writer with Bell Labs, and AT&T Information Systems, Merrill Lynch, and Citicorp — his career for the next 25 years. For the past 14 years his primary work has been active management of his stock market portfolio.
Weiss moved to Princeton in 1997 from South Orange primarily because of its excellent public school system. His son, Evan, a freshman at the University of Chicago, who also has the theater bug, was active on stage during his four years at Princeton High School. One of the plays he wrote as a Youth Ink playwright was produced at McCarter Theater.
“After leaving my regular job, I had more free time and remembered I used to enjoy acting,” says Weiss. After two semesters of an acting workshop at Princeton Adult Education, he auditioned for a part in a production of “Arsenic and Old Lace,” one of his personal comedy favorites, and was cast. “One of the best things about acting in a community theater is the play acting part,” says Weiss. “Another is all the interesting, fun people you meet and get to work in close collaboration with.”
“Since then I’ve played a great diversity of parts at several community theaters — a hardboiled detective, a reverend, a slick realtor, a Mad Hatter, the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, a lunatic who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, and now a cowboy,” says Weiss. “It’s kind of like becoming a Walter Mitty — someone who repeatedly fantasizes about leading another life.”
Bus Stop, Kelsey Theater, Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor. Drama with Yardley Players. $14. Friday, October 16, through Sunday, October 25. 609-570-3333. www.kelseytheatre.net.
