Selma Blair playing Kayleen picks at the blood on on fellow actor Brad Fleischer’s face — an action designed to be both comic and in keeping with the title of the terrific new, two-actor play now on the Alley’s Neuhaus Stage — Gruesome Playground Injuries.

It’s always a big step for someone whose best-known work is on the movie screen (Hell Boy, Hell Boy 2 and Legally Blonde), to suddenly do live theater — but for Blair, it’s bigger than most.

She’s scared to go onstage, but she picks a show when she shares 90 continuous minutes of duty with Fleischer who plays Doug. She’s not a big fan of ick, but gore and vomit are crucial parts of the plot of this dark comedy by playwright Rajiv Joseph.

Blair and Fleischer, who most recently starred in Joseph’s play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (and who, if you Google, you can see in a guest role of Timmy the soldier on Jericho), sat down with Hair Balls to answer a few questions between shows. They’re relaxed and clearly friends; knew each other before this play, and seem in some (but not all) ways close to the characters they play: the outgoing and athletic Doug who gives too much for love and the more tightly-wound Kayleen who loves and cares, but perhaps not as much, and who cuts herself.

The play bounces back and forth in time as the audience learns of one injury after another that each of the leads incurs from the time they meet at age 8 to when they are both 38.

The injuries are horrendous and have earned the play its mature advisory from the Alley. At the same time, while extreme, they are more than suitable metaphors for the way people have of hurting each other in relationships.

“I think the ick factor of the play is something that keeps the audience visually in check. It keeps testing them. Where did those scars come from?” Blair said. “I’m not an ick fan. I had trouble even looking at him when we were first dealing with the prosthetics in the rehearsal process, just dealing with any blood is very frightening to me.”

In contrast, Fleischer said he felt right at home the first time he covered his face in blood. “I come from the horror movie background so I love that stuff. I put the stuff on and I think that’s great. I love putting that stuff on.”

But Blair is nothing if not a trouper: “I keep my scars on to stay in Kayleen’s skin when I’m not at work and then just touch them up before shows.”

The length of the one-act show is tough, both agree.

“Having done a bunch of theater before, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Fleischer said. “It basically is a one-man show where you’re lucky enough to have somebody else out there where if you start faltering at all or if your energy starts to drop, you can look at the other person and pick it up.”

“Rehearsal itself was really exhausting to me, but the payoff is so important,” Blair said. “It’s a blessing to get to do a play like this with Brad and with Rajiv’s words. I love this play but it does require an endurance I need to find and it’s an important play and I need to do it justice eight times a week.”

(more…)

UP CLOSE WITH SELMA BLAIR
The ‘Hellboy II’ hottie talks about her flame-throwing role in the sequel, shacking up with the Demon of the Apocalypse and the rumors she’s playing Neil Gaiman’s Death!

WIZARD: Four years have gone by since the first movie; did you think you’d get to play the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman again?
BLAIR: I hoped that I would. I kind of thought that it was never going to happen, but ["Hellboy" and "Hellboy II" director] Guillermo del Toro just didn’t give up. When he gave me a call at 11 o’clock one night to tell me that they had the financing, I was really relieved. It was something that I had been waiting and hoping for and this does feel like we’re back with family even though it’s a whole new amazing experience. The first one was such an introduction to Hellboy that I always thought the meat would be in the second and third, at least for Liz, because in the first one she was afraid to take a step. She was a zombie, not wanting to own up to her power and not having the memory of what she’d created in her life. So I was really eager to come and play Liz with a little more vibrancy.

How much has she changed since the first movie?
I thought I would get here and already know this girl, but I realized that I don’t know her at all because I don’t know her as a woman. It seems like such a straightforward role, but it’s really been a challenge for me not to suck the energy out of Liz because that’s kind of how I played her in the first one, like she was in a vacuum.

Was the haircut something that Guillermo suggested, or something that you came up with together?
It was together. My hair, I basically went nuts and shaved my head. There was actually a girl who wanted my hair and I’m a giver. So I gave her my hair. [Laughs] I did that to make a wig for a child, but then I just made it a fashion thing that I had this strangely shaped head. But I thought, “Oh, God, Guillermo is going to kill me.” But he saw the short hair and I think he really wanted it. I think that it’s a little anime inspired.

How has Liz’s relationship with Hellboy developed since the first movie?
Well, it’s worked out about as much as my marriage in real life. [Laughs] [EDITOR'S NOTE: Blair divorced musician Ahmet Zappa in 2006.] That’s terrible to say. We’re very good friends. It’s difficult living with someone, especially a guy that takes up as much room as Hellboy, with as many cats as Hellboy has. So we are very happy together, but there’s trouble with spending so much time with someone that you love after you’re used to being alone and having your way. Between my fire and his little-boy sloppy behavior, we’re a mess—a lovable mess.

You’re packing heat in addition to your fire powers this time around; why are you carrying a gun?
Talk to Guillermo about that. It’s really embarrassing too. I wouldn’t pull this out if it weren’t completely rubber, but it’s really embarrassing. I spend so much time in this movie holding this gun up and I’m like to Doug [Jones, aka Abe Sapien] next to me, “Jesus Christ, don’t I have fire for this?”

You did the voice of Liz in the animated movies; has there been talk of any more of those?
I know that one was nominated for an Emmy, and I’m glad that that one person who nominated it bought it because that’s about the only copy that I know of. I don’t know if anymore are going to happen, but one of them was really beautiful. [Laughs].

Has the cast dynamic changed with the addition of psychic Johann Kraus?
I had just one scene with Abe Sapian that was really touching in the first one. That was actually really my only scene where I felt like a person communicating with someone, and in this one, he’s my buddy and we’re together all the time. So I feel closest to Doug in this and always Ron [Perlman, aka Hellboy]. I live next to Ron in real life, so he’s just someone that I’m really close to and have kept in touch with. Then John Alexander and James [Dodd], the couple of people that play Johann, I think the more the merrier—the more people that can suffer in their costumes and I can make fun of them because I don’t have one. I bedevil them. It’s awful. They’re sweating and dying and can’t breathe and I’m like, “Oh, my God, this cotton tank top is just really too much. I don’t know how you guys do it.”

Del Toro is also producing the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Death: The High Cost of Living. That seems right up your alley. Are you jockeying for that?
I’ve wanted to play Death for a long time. On the set of the first ["Hellboy"], people would see me and say, “You have to play Death. Oh my God, you have to do it.” I didn’t know he was doing “Death” at the time. He knew for sure that he’d be teaming up with Neil on that and he said, “Yeah, you’d be good for Death.” Then it’s been crickets. I think he definitely has his eye on someone, and I would know if it were me and it’s not me. [Neil and I are] good friends, and that still didn’t get me the job. [Laughs]

From Wizard Universe