Happy Returns

February 7, 2005 Issue

After 10 months on the road as the flamboyant choreographer Carmen Ghia in the national tour of Mel Brooks’ hit musical The Producers—which ended a successful run in Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center—Pitt Department of Theatre Arts alumnus Harry Bouvy (right) took time to visit with department chair Attilio “Buck” Favorini (left) and current theater students in the University’s Henry Heymann Theatre on Feb. 2.

“An acting career is not safe and never will be,” said Bouvy (CAS ‘89), recalling the time he nearly missed arriving in time for his performance at Pitt’s Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in 1989. As someone who had recently relocated to Pittsburgh’s South Side, he miscalculated the bus schedule and decided to make a run for it—over the Birmingham Bridge and into Oakland to make a performance of Antony and Cleopatra. He arrived in time to be “thrown on stage,” he remembered, but not without injuring himself on the way. “To this day, I can’t stretch my leg completely,” Bouvy said.

Yet, he can still dance and sing, surviving 305 Producers performances on the recent tour. In Buffalo, he even took on one of the show’s lead roles, that of Leo.

From Pittsburgh, it’s back home to New York City for Bouvy, for more auditions and a good rest following a year on the road. The secret to success in the theater business? “The people who are successful are the people who are still doing it,” Bouvy said, advising young actors to hang in there and understand that an acting career consists largely of auditions—many auditions. Bouvy said he looks back fondly on his academic career at Pitt and that his liberal arts education has served him well, even during those dry spells when he wasn’t earning a steady paycheck as an actor.