Battlestar Galactica

As mentioned last week, Alessandro Juliani will be back on the stage this Spring as the actor stars in the Victoria, British Columbia production of The Violet Hour.

The Victoria News ran an interesting interview with the man who plays Gaeta today, highlighting his Battlestar background but emphasizing that Juliani’s real love is the theater:

“With all due respect to Battlestar, this is using a completely different part of my brain,â€? Juliani told the newspaper. “On the spaceship I’m often given the task of spouting jargon and gobbledygook, which trains a certain part of your mind that is disposable … what I most appreciate about this is when you’re working on a play there is just so much more time to talk about character and subtext and relationships. In television the reality of the world is go, go, go.â€?

Juliani plays a struggling Irish writer in The Violet Hour, a sprawling play about book publishing that also examines love, life, and time travel.

“It’s like the the difference between being a sprinter and a long-distance runner,” Juliani explained. “I’m enjoying the discovery of rehearsal, remembering what it was like after three years and relishing it in a big way.â€?

It sounds like he is spending a lot of time at the theater, which sparks questions about the status of Gaeta in the last ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Gaeta is many folks’ pick for the final Cylon, but if he is on stage instead of on set perhaps speculation should be pointed towards another character.

Alessandro Juliani, who plays Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica, is a veteran of scifi and the stage. The actor has won numerous Canadian theater awards for his set designs, and this Spring fans of Gaeta and good acting can see him on stage in The Violet Hour at the Belfry Theater in Victoria, British Columbia.

The Violet Hour is a Tony award winning play that combines time travel, romance, and an ode to great books. The main character is Jonathan Pace Seavering, a young publisher with the limited resources to only publish one book and must choose between the tome of his best friend and his lover. He encounters a magical, page-spewing machine that feeds him information from the future, and allows for the audience to explore the time-honored subjects of ambition and fate.

The production runs from Tuesday, April 15th through May 18th with plays each Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights and afternoon productions on the weekends. Tickets range from $21 to $36 each, depending on the location of the seats and the night of the show.

It’s a good opportunity to visit gorgeous Victoria, a city that combines old world sophistication with outdoor charms like a fabulous botanical garden and whale watching. I spent three days in Victoria a few years ago, and truly enjoyed the town as well as its breathtaking scenery, quaint shopping, and tasty food.

Victoria is also a short ferry ride from Vancouver, where you can explore all sorts of BSG-related places, and Seattle, where you can geek out at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

Battlestar Galactica fans are about to become more familiar with Rekha Sharma, whose role as presidential aide Tory Foster will be more important in Season Four. The revelation that Tory is a sleeper Cylon has huge ramifications for the character, the President, and the show.

Now comes news that larger audiences will have a chance to become more familiar with Rekha as well, as she is currently filming the Jennifer Aniston drama Traveling. The film comes from the writing and directing team of Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson, who most recently created the show John Doe and previously did the film drama Dragonfly.

According to reports, Jennifer plays a hotel employee in Seattle who becomes romantically involved with a self-help guru who can’t seem to help himself:

“A romantic drama about a widower (Aaron Eckhart) whose book about coping with loss turns him into a best-selling self-help guru. On a business trip to Seattle, he falls for a woman (Jennifer Aniston) who attends one of his seminars, only to learn that he hasn’t yet truly confronted his wife’s passing.”

Rekha’s role in the film is simply listed as “Nose Ring,” indicating that she may be one of the characters at the self-help seminars that feature prominently in the film.

Battlestar Galactica cast member Alessandro Juliani, who plays Felix Gaeta, is also in the film as a character named “Tattoos.”

The production is supposedly filming in Vancouver, home to the production of Battlestar Galactica. It has gotten extra publicity from the rumors that Aniston, always a tabloid staple, has dated cast and crew members during her time in Canada.

I was perusing After Elton’s recent list of Top Ten Gay and Bisexual SciFi Characters this evening and realized I had always assumed that Gaeta was gay. 

I know, this is not a revolutionary thought as Gaeta’s devotion to Gaius Baltar inspired similar speculation from legions on fans during the first two seasons.  His nicknames among fans include "Gay-ta" as well as "Lt. Gaydar" and many others. 

And yet, we have never learned for sure whether Gaeta is a gay man … an odd omission from a series that is otherwise very comfortable with the ambiguities of sexuality and the soul.

If you are interested in some spoilers/speculation on Gaeta on Season Four, click the link to send you to the rest of this post.

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Lucy Lawless is mentioned over on People.com as one of the celebrities in the audience for Melora Hardin’s caberet show at Hollywood’s Catalina Jazz Club this week. Melora plays Jan, the self-destructive executive of Steve Carrell’s Michael on The Office.

Keep it up Grace Park fans! Grace now has well over 1,000,000 votes in TV.com’s viewer contest to determine the Hottest Actress of 2007, and a nice lead on Heroes’ hottie Hayden Panettiere.

If you are a graphic artist and a Tahmoh Penikett fan, you can get on Tahmoh’s radar by submitting a banner design for Justine’s All About Tahmoh blog. Helo himself will be picking the winner.

More details on Sam Witwer’s new project, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, were revealed at CES recently. Sam played “Crashdown” on Battlestar Galactica and will play the main character in this new and highly-anticipated video game.

Alessandro Juliani, aka Lt. Felix Gaeta, is also an accomplished opera singer. Click here to listen to an audio clip of him singing at a BSG con last August.

This cute picture of Battlestar Galactica’s Nicki Clyne with an Avon breast cancer awareness bear comes courtesy of New Yorker Lisa Spodak. Lisa asks celebrities to pose with the bears and then auctions them off along with other autographed awareness items to raise money for Avon’s Walk for Breast Cancer.

Based on photos on Lisa’s site she is quite the scifi fan and has been lucky enough to get bears from a number of scifi celebrities such as Firefly, Lord of the Rings, and Stargate cast members, Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, and most of the cast of Battlestar Galactica. Previous BSG bear auctions have included Jamie Bamber, Grace Park, James Callis, Mary McDonnell, Edward James Olmos, Tricia Helfer, Michael Hogan, Kandyse McClure, Aaron Douglas, and Tahmoh Penikett; many of these folks were also kind enough to sign a pair of pink Everlast boxing gloves which Lisa auctioned off to support the cause. If you are interested in bidding on Nicki’s bear sign up for Lisa’s mailing list as the auction will be going live soon.

If bears are not your thing but you still want to help “Save the Boobs,” then check out Karen Lynch’s Discussing Breast Cancer blog. Karen is a two-time breast cancer survivor who gives a detailed account of her life after her double mastectomy to raise awareness for breast cancer prevention efforts.

Battlestar Galactica, Nicki Clyne, breast cancer, Avon, celebrity, walk, autograph, Firefly, Stargate, Neil Gaimon, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Grace Park, Mary McDonnell, Edward James Olmos, Tricia Helfer, Allessendro Juliani, Michael Hogan, Kandyse McClure, Tahmoh Penikett, Aaron Douglas, mastectomy

The picture above is from Entertainment Weekly, who listed BSG’s Katee Sackhoff and Michael Hogan among their favorite 100 stars in this week’s issue.

Not everyone loves Alessandro Juliani’s sound design in Romeo & Juliet.

Speaking of Shakespeare, Wherefore Art Thou Jamie Bamber? Walt Disney issued a press release saying Apollo would be walking the red carpet at the Ratatouille premiere last Friday, but much to our disappointment no photos have emerged of Jamie on the red carpet as of yet. Perhaps he had to stay back in Vancouver to prep for this week’s press tour? More on that later this week.

Finally, this is not BSG related, but still frakkin’ awesome … click here to learn more about bidding on dinner with Joss Whedon at Comicon.

EW, Entertainment Weekly, Katee Sackhoff, Michael Hogan, Allessandro Juliani, Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare, Starbuck, Tigh, Joss Whedon, Vancouver, Jamie Bamber, Apollo, Comicon

Monday we wished Alessandro Juliani, Battlestar Galactica’s Lt. Gaeta, good luck at Canada’s Jessie awards. That night he won “Best Sound Design” for his work on the contemporary play Skydive, sharing his honors with design partner Meg Rowe.

Reviews have been good so far for Alessandro’s current production, a dark and contemporary take on Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet for Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach summer festival:

At the Capulets’ party, Gibson stages Romeo and Juliet’s romantic first meeting in counterpoint with an ominous stop-action, ritualistic dance of death by the rest of the company. Punctuated by frightening bursts of laughter underlined by Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe’s scary sound score, the scene is reminiscent of a German expressionist painting come to life.

The sound design by Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe, who met and fell in love as the principals in a Playhouse production of this work, is subtlely lush and romantic, except in a clever “party mix” whose strident tones work well with Noam Gagnon’s deliberately mechanistic choreography.

Special thanks to the Jessie’s website for the above photo, which actually shows Alessandro accepting his win for sound in 2003.

Bard on the Beach, Alessandro Juliani, Battlestar Galactica, Gaeta, Shakespeare, Vancouver, Capulet, Romeo & Juliet, Meg Roe, Jessie

Alessandro Juliani, Battlestar Galactica’s Lt. Felix Gaeta, has a little-known but well-respected summer job at Vancouver’s renowned Bard on the Beach Shakespeare festival. He rejoins the company this summer, working behind the scenes as a sound designer on Romeo & Juliet.

Alessandro is currently up for two prestigious Jessie awards for his work with the Canadian theatre community. The Jessie Awards are presented by the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award Society, whose 2007 Awards dinner will be held this evening in Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom at the House of Blues Hotel. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster.

Alessandro shares his Jessie nominations with design partner Meg Roe, who he has worked with on numerous past productions. The two created the sound design on last year’s Bard on the Beach productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and on a much more modern production, Skydive. They have even worked on stage together, when they played opposite each other in the title roles in a R&J production at the Vancouver Playhouse.

You can see Alessandro’s sound design skills in person all summer at Bard on the Beach. Romeo & Juliet premiered last Wednesday and will play at selected dates throughout the summer, and tickets are available here.

Battlestar Galactica, Geata, Bard on the Beach, Alessandro Juliani, Shakespeare, Vancouver, House of Blues, Jessie, Romeo & Juliet, sound design, theatre, theater, Skydive