A Murray State University alumnus is featured in a National Geographic Channel documentary series next month.
Daniel van Thomas, a 2007 graduate of MSU’s theater program, appears in American Genius, a docu-drama using interviews with modern experts, historical testimony and dramatized reenactments, to highlight the work and lives of American inventors and their competitors.
Van Thomas plays Glenn Curtiss, an engineer who raced the Wright Brothers to develop the first working airplane.
"At the heart of the episode, you’re getting to the inventors themselves and the personal drama of periods of history in which two very dominant personalities were fighting to create the same thing,” said van Thomas. “So in my particular episode, you have the Wright brothers, who everybody knows are generally credited with inventing human aviation, versus Glenn Curtiss who was their key rival and a daredevil, an engine-builder, and a motorcyclist and who I had the pleasure of playing."
Van Thomas says he had a short window between being cast and shooting to research the role. Fortunately, he says, playing a real person from history makes it easier.
"It's very nice that you have a guidebook," said van Thomas. "Especially with someone like Curtiss, you have access to a wealth of information to know 'okay, here we are, we're at an aviation fair on this date, I wonder what was going through his head,' and chances are you can find something about what happened to him the day before or the day after."
Van Thomas also starred in Revelation Trail, a western horror film shot largely in west Kentucky and southern Illinois by Murray State alumni and local residents. In it, he plays a preacher set against the perils of the 19th-century American frontier and hordes of the risen undead.
He says he enjoys playing in American period pieces and that telling a casting director “I’m from Kentucky” can sometimes help in getting the role.
“Because you can say ‘yes, I know how to fire guns and ride horses.' Just basically put ‘from Kentucky’ and they get that," said van Thomas. "But a lot of it boils down to a look. People tell me ‘you look like you belong to a different time.’ I guess because I’m very bad at modern life. So be bad at Twitter and have a five-o-clock shadow and you’ll be cast in period pieces. And you just have a lot more fun too, you get to fly150 year-old planes, ride horses and drive around in model-Ts.”
Van Thomas is currently based in Los Angles and advises current theater and film production students at Murray State to get as involved as possible and as much as possible.
"While you're at Murray, work as much as you can," said van Thomas. "Take the opportunities that are offered by the program, and when you're not doing a university-sponsored project, do projects on your own. If you're in theater, go and seek film projects that film students are working on. Where you end up does makes a big difference, but no matter the location, continue to do something that involves your work every single day and hold on to that freedom.
"Don't be afraid to not have a safety net. It's very easy to get a day job that will consume your life, but, personally, at the beginning I found it really helps to accept the fact that you might not be materially comfortable for a few years. It's just the nature of having such a strange job. If you can accept that and accept tuna fish and potatoes for awhile, and do something each day that pushes you forward whether its submitting for auditions, getting head shots or going to a workshop...then things are bound to break."
Van Thomas’ episode of American Genius “The Wright Brothers versus Curtiss” airs Monday, June 1st at 8 P.M. CST on the National Geographic Channel.