Jack Stevens greets me at the door of his Belhaven Heights triplex from the comfort of his wheelchair, a result of an unfortunate accident three years ago that keeps him for the most part immobile. A cloud of faded red hair surrounds his round bespectacled face. At 52 he's led an active, theatrical life in his hometown of Jackson. Growing up he attended "Power, Bailey and Murrah," and in his effervescent way, he makes them sound like the holy trinity of schools. He started acting while at Murrah and went on to graduate from Ole Miss in 1972 with a major in theater and a minor in English and history. He tried out for Yale's renowned theater department three times and was second alternate twice.
Returning to Jackson after one semester of graduate school in Oxford, Stevens began work as a "day one employee" at Poet's, then a restaurant and nightclub in The Quarter on Lakeland Drive, to support his acting career. He also began acting at New Stage Theatre. New Stage's first home was in a Seventh Day Adventist church at the corner of Gallatin and Hooker that held 100 to 150 people, "depending on their size," he says.
Stevens appeared in countless roles over the five years that he was with the company. His most memorable part was as Edmund in Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" in which Geraldine Fitzgerald, who had just finished appearing in the Broadway revival of the play, also appeared.
Stevens was also host of Mississippi ETV's "Mississippi Roads" for several seasons.
During his years as one of the two employees at New Stage, Stevens wore many hats including set design. This experience led to a love of the work, and he has since helped with almost all the films shot in Mississippi over the past decade, including "A Time To Kill," "The Chamber," "Mississippi Burning," "My Dog Skip" and "O Brother Where Art Thou?."
"What I always had the most fun at was set decorating," he says. But, the love of acting has never left him. This past February he revived his college one-man show as Mark Twain at Hal & Mal's. He has also worked on a one-man show as Willie Morris, and can be called a true expert on the subject of Morris and his work. Stevens will present "Preserving Legacies," an hour-long multi-media presentation of Morris' life and selected works, on Jan. 13 at noon during the 2003 Mondays with Friends at Welty Lectures at the Eudora Welty Library.
Rising with the help of crutches, Stevens escorts me to the door and I am struck that he continues to play a role, that of a true Southern gentleman.
— J. Bingo Holman
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