Broadway’s Andrew Durand reveals the secret to stillness

One of Broadway's more impressive performances this season is by Andrew Durand, who is a kinetic force in the first half of “Dead Outlaw” and absolutely motionless in the second.

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For some 40 minutes, he’s a corpse, standing in a coffin. “Some nights I want to scream. Some nights I want to rip my skin off — that pressure that you can't move starts to get to me. And so there are nights that it is very challenging,” says the actor.

Durand stars in the musical as Elmer McCurdy, a real-life alcoholic drifter-turned-failed bandit who was shot dead in 1911 but whose afterlife proved to be stranger than fiction.

His embalmed body becomes a prized possession for half a century, transported across the country to take part in carnival sideshows, wax museums, Hollywood horror movies, roadside attractions and, finally, a prop at an amusement-park ride in the 1970s.