Jonathan Luke Stevens meets fans following his evening performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.
Sporting black, metallic tights and a long flowing wig, Jonathan Luke Stevens twirls gracefully across the spot-lit stage. Every audience member’s eyes remain fixed – half enthralled by the beauty of his movements – the other half blushing ever-so-slightly at the sight of the flamboyant attire and how it appears on the man’s tall, built stature.
Stevens is a full-time musical theatre actor for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the largest Tony Award-winning, non-profit theatre company in the nation.
As an actor and musician in the early 1980s, Stevens’ uncle often allowed him to visit and watch productions from backstage. “I looked up to everything he did,” Stevens says somberly.
His uncle passed away suddenly when Stevens was just six. “He was a lover of old Hollywood musicals. My house inherited all his old movies so as a kid I would sneak into the movie cabinet and pick one out,” Stevens says. He was exposed to the greatness of Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Debbie Reynolds, Danny Kaye and what he calls the “amazing and awful production” of The Pirates of Penzance.
Following his parents’ divorce when he was twelve, Stevens was sent off to theater camp. “I think they wanted me to be busy and not think about it,” he says. It was there that Stevens fell in love with being on stage. “I caught the bug. I haven’t looked back since.”
In 2010, Stevens began his formal study of musical theater at the renowned Boston Conservatory. “The dance teachers didn’t care that your major was theater, you were held to the same standard as the dance majors. The same went with vocal technique and singing,” he says. “I ended up coming out the other side as a very well-rounded and balanced performer and it allowed me get hired right out of school.”
On Feb. 19, 2017 Stevens made his season debut as Valentine in the adaptation of the Academy Award–winning screenplay Shakespeare in Love. He is the youngest professional actor for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and largely credits his formal-educational experience for his career. “There is something wonderful about a safe space to learn, try things and fail as artists. It helps you find out who you are as an actor,” he says. “And most of all it gives you the foundation to sustain a life in the theater.”
Stevens anticipates a long career with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “Every day I get to wake up and embody someone else,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else – even when that means pirouettes in an embarrassingly short hemline.”