The Stage According to Jim

Jim Lichtscheidl is our greatest comic actor. And pretty funny behind the stage, too.

Jim Lichtscheidl has a way with words. Specifically, the way he says them, which explains his 1987 win of the Minnesota state high school speech title. And his long, unflagging career, practically ever since, on the stages of the Guthrie and nearly every other theater in town. He’ll play Bluntschli, a wry and knowing soldier, in the Guthrie’s Arms and the Man this March. Here are some peeks at his past performances.
 

Two Gents

Jim and Randy Reyes have made a great pair of young and merry pranksters at the Guthrie in the last five or seven years. Here, a little backstage slapstick promoting their lead roles in Two Gentlemen of Verona.
 

Draw the Pirate: A Comedy of Obsession

This short film is a bit of a curiosity from 2004, about a man gaining acceptance to an art school advertised on a matchbook cover. The lead is played an Emmy-winning TV actor. Jim plays the unnamed “second man.”
 

 

Tiny Kushner

The Guthrie’s Tony Kushner festival a couple years back featured a couple of lesser-known short plays by the stage’s greatest contemporary playwright packaged as Tiny Kushner. The series went on to the Berkeley Rep, with Jim playing opposite his frequent Guthrie foil JC Cutler. Here you an catch him in a few typical scenes.
 


 

Read more about Jim Lichtscheidl in “Presto Chango.”