By Erin Randolph erin@dmcityview.com

Clint Curtis is a man of many projects. The bartender at the Vaudeville Mews and the Lift is known for being the creator of iPod Monday, and the co-creator of Rock & Roll Bingo and Hollywood Jenga. He's also an actor, having lived in Los Angeles for five years and earning roles in "Blade," "Good Burger" and "Deep Rising," and more recently acting in commercials and training videos.

Though he's been offstage for four years now, he will return to it when he plays the role of Pale in Frank Burnette's production of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This" to be staged at the Vaudeville Mews, which starts its four-week run on Feb. 16. He's also hoping to start his own theater company, Act Now, though it's still in its infancy stage.

"Burn This" takes place in a Manhattan loft where Anna (Kourtney Horner), a dancer-choreographer, lives with her two gay roommates, Robbie and Larry (Curt Peterson). Robbie has just been killed in a freak boating accident, and Anna is recovering with help from her good-intentioned boyfriend, Burton (Michael Hornaday). Though Burton repeatedly asks for Anna's hand in marriage, she finds herself unable to accept his proposals. When Robbie's older brother, Pale (Curtis), bursts onto the scene to collect his belongings, Anna's life is transformed by this new dangerous, yet sensitive man.

"Burn This" is a play that Curtis saw in a small black-box theater as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, where he studied acting. It was there that the role of Pale caught his eye, thanks to the talents of its actor.

"I'd never seen another actor like this at the time," Curtis says. "He was unbelievable. He was mesmerizing. I couldn't take my eyes off him."

As an aspiring actor himself, Curtis decided to follow the career of this aspiring actor, and figured that if that actor couldn't make it, then Curtis himself didn't have a chance. So he did. The actor's name: Billy Crudup. His movies: "Almost Famous," "Big Fish," "Sleepers" and "Inventing the Abbots."

When local producer Burnette approached Curtis, asking him what play he would want to see staged at the Mews, without hesitation Curtis recommended "Burn This." And when Burnette agreed to produce it, Curtis decided he couldn't stand behind the bar watching someone else on stage play the role of Pale.

And now that he's got back his passion for acting, Curtis has decided he might pursue Act Now, a vehicle that he hopes will help foster a more successful community theater scene in Des Moines by improving the quality of the acting through classes he hopes to lead - the kind of class he was never able to find in Los Angeles.

"I always wanted a class where I could work - do some scene work, get sweaty, learn about acting by doing it," Curtis says. "I'm looking to do a class - no bullshit - where we get together and do some acting. I want to do a class that I would've wanted to find."

Start small. Dream big. That's the approach Curtis is taking with Act Now. Right now, he hopes to start up a class. But maybe, if the support is there, in 10 years he would like to have his own school for the arts in Des Moines. But then again, he might not do anything at all. The future really is a big question mark.

"I want to start really small," Curtis says. "My only aspiration is to take likeminded individuals - actors, people who are interested in acting and people who are afraid to get in front of other people - and get them in a room and work, sweat, yell, feel something. Getting caught up in something - to me, that's what acting is about." CV

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