The Brightest Light On Broadway: Andrew Durand

For the second half of the new musical Dead Outlaw at the Longacre Theatre, Andrew Durand has to stand “dead” in a coffin for 45 minutes straight, staring right into the audience. That’s because Duran plays Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw killed in a shoot-out after robbing a train in Oklahoma in 1911. In the stranger-than-fiction true tale, his mummified corpse made quite the rounds and had an even crazier journey than McCurdy did in life. “It’s incredibly physically, vocally and mentally taxing,” says Durand, who recently appeared in Shucked. One perk of the coffin work is that Durand gets to stare straight into the audience as “everyone is on the edge of their seat, mouths agape with shock, wonder and laughter.”