entertainment
“ WHATEVER YOUTHINK, THE CAMERA WILL SEE.” COLLIN KELLY-SORDELET
INSET: COURTESY OF TOBY OLIVER
Most kids would shy away from watching their parents in the act of fighting, but Collin Kelly- Sordelet always knew that they were working at the craft offight choreography, and was enchanted by it.
He is the youngest of three children born to Kathleen Kelly and Rick Sordelet, who is hailed bymany as America’ s preeminent fight director.“ My parents met atRutgers in the acting program, and Iwas aware of acting at ayoung age,” he says.“ I watched them create illusions with fight choreography and thought‘ I want to create illusions. Iwant to create something that will illicit this response.’”
Kelly-Sordelet acted in acouple of shows at the Essex Youth Theater, and exercised his performance skills at Hillside, Glenfield and Montclair High schools, performing regularly in the School of Visual and Performing Arts.“ SVPA gave me such confidence as an artist and aman,” he says.“ It gave me avoice.”
He attended Paper Mill Playhouse summer conservatories, and was tempted to skip college to become a working actor, but his mother urged him to apply toJuilliard.
His auditions were successful and soon followed by others: He joined the final pre-Broadway workshop for The Last Ship, the musical with lyrics and music bySting based on the musician’ s experiences growing up near Newcastle, England. At the same time, Kelly-Sordelet was acting in SVPA’ s production of Hairspray.“ It was just funny, with Sting in the daytime, and MHS at night for rehearsal,” he says.“ I was in the room with Sting getting personal voice lessons from him, then going and performing with all my friends at school.”
Now, though, he had a decision to make: The Last Ship was bound for Broadway, and if he hoped to be in that version, he would have to leave Juilliard.“ The idea for my character
came from the workshop, but they still auditioned every young actor for it,” he says. When he won the role for asecond time, he opted to take it.
“ You do eight shows a week, and everything revolves around it,” he recalls.“ I was living at home [ in Montclair ] at the time. Around the holidays, the traffic was so bad. I was in the car with my family and had
COLLIN KELLY- SORDELET
23, MONTCLAIR RESIDENT CKSORDELET @ CKSORDELET
WILDLING Kelly-Sordelet’ s most recent film is ahorrorfantasy story. to sprint 15 to 20 blocks to make it for the curtain. The stage managers were not happy that day.”
The teen did more than 100 performances as Gideon, a man who returns to his small town after 15 years for his father’ s funeral, as well as Gideon’ s son, Tom Dawson. Brenda Pepper, the SVPA advisor and director, says that it was thrilling for the MHS Performing Arts team to attend the show. When its run was over there was a“ grieving period,” says Kelly-Sordelet, but he responded to it by auditioning constantly, meeting with casting directors, and taking on-camera training classes. His preparation won him a two-episode role in Hulu’ s The Path, aswell as arole alongside Liv Tyler inthe film Wildling, released this year. His most recent film, Radium Girls, premiered atthe Tribeca Film Festival in the spring.
“ I love theater, because there’ s nothing like working with alive audience,” he says.“ But the intimacy with the camera... It’ sthe greatest lie detector. Whatever you think, the camera will see.”
He also credits the Montclair schools with giving him aleg up in the acting world.“ It was such an opportunity to be 9or10, and be exposed to having asolo infront of alive audience,” he says.“ Even in middle school when you’ re awkward, it’ s good to have that outlet.”
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MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE BACK TOSCHOOL 2018
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