Jan 30, 2012 4:06 PM
Jackson Parli may be just 11, but he has the acting bug, now more than ever before.
His heightened enthusiasm is thanks to his recent taste of the acting major leagues. This past December, Jackson appeared in two performances of “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” the opera by Gian Carlo Menotti, staged by the Little Orchestra Society at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center Plaza in Manhattan.
Acting agrees with the budding thespian, according to those in the know.
“First of all, Jackson is undoubtedly a star, and will absolutely be one if that’s what he so chooses,” Thom Pasculli, the production’s movement director, wrote in an email last week. “Any actor needs skills and willpower. Jackson is focused, intelligent, perceptive and dedicated, and as long as he stays committed to being an actor, that’s what he’ll be.”
Jackson had his first brush with the stage at age 7 when he signed up for a Southampton Town-run summer acting program, he explained during an interview at his home in East Quogue last week.
“And then, after that, I loved it,” the young actor said.
It wasn’t until years later that Jackson first visited Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan. In September 2010, his mother, Alexis Gersten, took her son to see “Peter and the Wolf” at the theater.
“I was amazed. It was huge and there’s so many seats,” Jackson said of Avery Fisher Hall. “And it’s such a big stage.”
After the show, Jackson and his mother were invited to a luncheon, where he met Little Orchestra Executive Director, and family friend, Joanne Bernstein-Cohen.
“We went to say hi to her and Jackson was talking to her about how wonderful the show was,” Ms. Gersten recalled. “She called my mom a few months before ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’ was going to be staged and said, ‘Jackson was so cute and lovely and so excited about acting. Would he like to be in this production?’”
Jackson got a call of his own from Ms. Bernstein-Cohen in October. He didn’t think twice about his answer.
“I was really, really excited,” he said. “I couldn’t believe I was going to be in a play with professional actors.”
“Amahl and the Night Visitors” is a one-act opera. The first opera specifically composed for television in America, it was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on Christmas Eve in 1951 at Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast live as the debut production of the “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” It’s been a Christmastime tradition ever since.
The opera follows Amahl, a disabled shepherd boy-turned-beggar who has an affinity for telling white lies. One day in Judea, Amahl and his mother are visited by three strangers. They are the Three Kings, and they are on their way to Bethlehem to visit Jesus Christ, who has just been born.
Jackson was cast as one of the villagers, he said, dressed in a patched shirt and jeans, a poncho and moccasins.
“I was kind of, sort of an extra, but not really,” he reported, smiling. “They were going for the old-fashioned, poor villager look. On stage, I got to give one of the Kings a basket.”
There were two rehearsals before the show—one at Pearl Studios in Manhattan, where many of the great Broadway names practice, and the second was a dress rehearsal the day before the production on the big stage in front of 2,000 New York City school children, Ms. Gersten said.
“It was fun, a little scary and nerve-wrecking,” Jackson said of being on the Avery Fisher Hall stage for the first time.
The next day, December 17, was show time. Jackson waited in the children’s dressing room backstage, excitedly playing games and anxiously reviewing the choreography while watching the opera on a closed-circuit television.
About halfway into the production, Jackson took the stage. A wave of relief washed over him, he said.
According to Mr. Pasculli, Jackson delivered his role flawlessly in both productions that day.
“I knew right away working with Jackson that he was sharp and dependable,” Mr. Pasculli wrote. “And working with any actors, but especially with a large group of kids, those qualities are highly valuable. Jackson took direction very well. He was able to help out with the organization of props backstage and he brought respect and care to everything he did. He was responsible for interacting with a life-sized donkey puppet on stage and Jackson made it a very lively scene.”
His part kept him on stage for about 20 minutes, Jackson estimated. For a portion of the scene, he was situated inside a house on a raised platform, his mother said.
