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Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances: Jason Peck on Theatre at St. Luke’s
When the curtain rises Friday, November 13 for the St. Luke’s Upper School production of Distracted, by Lisa Loomer, director Jason Peck will be living in the moment: his first production since joining St. Luke’s in August.
Peck joins St. Luke’s with an impressive resume. Behind the scenes, he has developed new work for the stage, collaborating directly with playwrights Charles Mee, Jane Anderson and Eric Bogosian. He is also an award winning stage actor performing Off-Broadway and in many regional theatres across the nation. On screen he has appeared in NYPD Blue, Family Law, In Her Shoes, King of Queens, George Lucas in Love, and in a large recurring role for three seasons on the cult-hit Roswell.
As St. Luke’s new Director of Theatre Arts, Peck oversees the after school theatre program and teaches two sections of eighth grade Acting and one section of Upper School Acting. He loves the strong sense of community at St. Luke’s and the way “everyone lifts each other up.”
It’s a big change from LA. Peck is new to small-town life and feels a bit like he has stepped back in time. It’s a feeling he’d like to share with his students, as they approach theatre arts through the world-famous Meisner technique.
“We are so scheduled, pulled in a million different directions– bombarded by beeps and buzzes that take us out of the moment,” said Peck.
It’s one of the reasons he chose Lisa Loomer’s play, Distracted, about a mother whose 9 year old son may have ADD. He said the kids are getting it—he sees them on campus, sitting together, but staring at their screens. Through the play they can explore the playwright’s question: “What is ADD in an ADD world?”
Most importantly, he picked Loomer’s play because it is contemporary. “We often do the classics, where the script is a fixed thing.” But this play, which opened on Broadway in 2009, gave them the chance to collaborate with a living playwright – literally. When his actors had questions like: “’What did the playwright mean here?’ we could ask her,” Peck said, “and she answered.”
Peck’s mission is to get his students to lose their self-consciousness and be comfortable in their own skin. “I’m looking for actors to lose the idea that acting means putting on a performance and/or character. I am trying to develop something deeper, ,” said Peck, “a performance that is lived in.” He teaches that acting is not making funny faces or pretending to do something, it’s actually doing it, “living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.”
He said he has seen some subtle breakthroughs. After an exercise recently, a student observed: “I wasn’t acting, I was just talking.” Peck thought, “Exactly!”
He has also seen some major breakthroughs. Sixteen-year-old Grace Cashman plays the role of Mama in Distracted, with an honesty that Peck describes as “mind-blowing.”
One of the things her character realizes in the play is that the best thing she can give her son is her attention. We’ll do the same come November 13 & 14 at 7pm in the Seldin Performing Arts Theater.
St. Luke’s School is a secular (non-religious), private school in New Canaan, CT for grades 5 through 12 serving over 40 towns in Connecticut and New York. Our exceptional academics and diverse co-educational community foster students’ intellectual and ethical development and prepare them for top colleges. St. Luke’s Leading with Humanity curriculum builds the commitment to serve and the confidence to lead.
