Bruce Katzman

Bruce Katzman was bitten by the bug for acting at age five-and-a-half when he performed as The Dummy on the knee of his 13-year old eldest brother, Mark (The Ventriloquist), in a talent show at Camp Baco, a summer camp in the Adirondacks' town of Minerva, NY. In a professional career of over 40 years, he has performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, in regional theatre and in Film and Television. Bruce was born in New York City, the third of four children, to Nathan and Anita Katzman and, until age 14, he grew up in the Westchester suburb of New Rochelle. He found a home in the theatre, performing in school Drama Clubs and Community Theatre productions throughout his youth. During Junior High School, Bruce attended the very first training school of the Roundabout Theatre in New York City, newly founded by Gene Feist, in the basement of a supermarket at 26th St. and Sixth Ave.

Bruce was inducted into the National Thespian Society, Troupe #1958 (Sarasota High School) in May of 1967.

Bruce's first professional audition was in New York City for a TV commercial, on Nov. 22, 1963. As they were driving into the NYC for the audition, the news came on the radio that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. The producers held the audition anyway, but nothing came of it.

His Drama Teacher at Albert Leonard Junior High School in New Rochelle, NY was Gene Feist, who founded the Roundabout Theatre in 1965. Gene brought some of his students into NYC on Saturday mornings for professional acting training in that undeveloped space in the basement of a supermarket building in NY's Chelsea district where the Roundabout performed its first productions.

After moving to Sarasota, Florida in 1966, Bruce began a many-year association with the Asolo Theatre, a leading regional theatre. It provided a further professional training ground and he did many plays as an apprentice and as an intern with the company.

Bruce graduated from Sarasota High School in 1969. In the class behind him was Paul Rubenfeld, who later became Paul Reubens (aka/ Pee Wee Herman). Paul played Nathan Detroit in their high school production of Guys and Dolls and Bruce played Harry the Horse. They also apprenticed together at the Asolo Theatre in Sarasota.

The play, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, ran in San Francisco at the Little Fox Theatre for an unheard of five-and-a-half years in the early 1970's. It was directed by Lee Sankowich. Bruce was in that production for its final eight months in a variety of roles. By closing night, he had been playing Ruckly, the shaved-head lobotomy patient, for four months. Many years later, in 2012, Bruce again worked for Lee Sankowich as the lead in the comic tour-de-force Jacob and Jack, produced in Hollywood at Lee's Zephyr Theatre on Melrose Ave.

College years brought him back north again, to Ithaca College, which he graduated from in 1973. (Among notable graduates of IC that year was Bob Iger, current Chairman of the Walt Disney Company). A summer in NYC in the early '70's introduced Bruce to the HB Studio and the influence of teachers such as Bill Hickey and Aaron Frankel and the work of Uta Hagen.

In 1974, Bruce moved to San Francisco and was hired by Sankowich-Golyn as a cast-member of their long-running production of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST at the Little Fox Theatre. The year after the production closed, he was accepted into the prestigious training program at the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), still under the direction of Bill Ball.

In 1977 he moved to Los Angeles, where he earned his SAG card in the TV series BILLY LIAR (aka/ BILLY), which featured Steve Guttenberg in his first starring role. Other TV productions from that period include EIGHT IS ENOUGH and LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE. During the late '70s, Bruce met Stella Adler in Los Angeles and began studies with her in her summer conservatories in Hollywood.

Bruce briefly experimented with rodeo-style Bull Riding. Fascinated by rodeo clowns, he researched bull riding for a story he wanted to develop. At the Bob Hope Ranch in Simi Valley in 1979, he rode some bulls and faced off in a ring with a huge white Brahma bull.

In 1980, he followed her to NYC to become a full-time student at the Stella Adler Studio.

In 1984, following a summer program with the British-American Drama Academy (BADA) in Oxford, England, Bruce came to the attention of Earle Gister, Chairman of the Acting Department of the Yale School of Drama.

Bruce had a storybook Broadway debut in January of 1992 when, as the understudy for a leading role in Tony Randall's National Actors' Theatre, he stepped in at the last moment on opening night, playing opposite Tony Randall and Lynn Redgrave! An ailing George Martin had to bow out the morning of Press Night (the play had been in previews for a week already) and with only a few hours' notice Bruce was costumed and ready to go in the Feydeau farce, A Little Hotel On the Side. On stage with him that night were also Maryann Plunkett, Paxton Whitehead and Rob Lowe. Danny Burstein was also a member of the inaugural company.