Luke
Ferrante
Multidisciplinary Theater Artist
About
Luke is a junior at Harvard College studying Theater, Dance, and Media, with a focus on producing, directing, and theater management. This summer, he is returning to the New London Barn Playhouse for his second season, where he will serve as Artistic Coordinator, assisting the Artistic Director and General Manager and supporting administrative, casting, and front-of-house operations. Luke will also serve as the assistant director for Escape to Margaritaville, running at The Barn from August 5–16.
This past school year, he interned at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), assisting both the directing and company management teams on Wonder, a new musical that completed its run in February. Following that experience, and a prior Stage Management Observership on The Odyssey, he joined the A.R.T.'s Student Advisory Committee, where he helps discuss new opportunities to engage the Harvard student body as the theater expands into its new Allston home. Luke also worked as Company Manager and Marketing Assistant for LATE at Boston Center for the Arts, where he collaborated with the Associate Producer to coordinate artist contracts, served as the primary point of contact for all creative teams during performances, and worked alongside box office and marketing staff.
Luke graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy, where he spent three years studying musical theater. His final performance there was as Laertes in Interlochen's 2024 production of Hamlet. The previous summer, he performed in the intensive ensemble of Chess at The Muny in St. Louis. At Interlochen, he also participated in Mukti, an interdisciplinary and collaborative production that premiered at Lincoln Center and solidified his passion for the creative and organizational processes behind theatrical work. Over about six months, he devised and developed the show alongside peers and faculty, gaining firsthand experience in project development from the ground up.
"Somalia Dream" from Mukti at Lincoln Center
Al-Shabaab, the Islamist insurgent group seeking to seize control of ungoverned territory throughout Somalia, recruits (and in many cases abducts) children to join their ranks, brainwashing them into thinking they are serving a valiant cause for their country. This was the story I needed to tell.
I grappled with the idea that due to the circumstances of their birth, at least 7,000 young Somali children live this reality—one I was now attempting to render dramatically onstage in Mukti. How would I convey the disjunction between my lived experience and the act of inhabiting someone else’s trauma? Was it even responsible to try? I realized that in Mukti, we the actors had the obligation to foster awareness through art. I blocked out a dream sequence to entwine our disparate lives—actor and child soldier—before severing the connection and jolting the actors and audience back to reality. “Somalia Dream,” an original piece, was born: I collaborated for months with fellow actors to bring attention to a humanitarian crisis which, for many Americans, was just background noise on the nightly news.
The night of Mukti’s premiere, I took the stage in darkness before a Lincoln Center audience of 2,200 people. I hit my mark, lay down in my spotlight, and closed my eyes. The soundscape I’d woven together from among dozens of documentaries I’d studied began: an East African drum beat, a war siren, and an Al-Shabaab chant led by leader Mahad Karate. The three of us inhabiting the child soldiers woke up, startled by a war siren, our physicality and facial expressions modeled on the more than fifty images of child soldiers I’d pored over for inspiration. As Karate’s voice boomed from my soundscape—“Are we ready?”—we raised our fists and replied “Haa!” (yes), a raw, naïve bravery in the face of our imminent deaths. We performed slow-motion running in place at the front of the stage to convey the futility of escaping war, with the drumbeat steadily building as we increased our speed, still going nowhere. At the sound effect of a gunshot, I fell to the floor, paralyzed—until I awoke atop a soft pillow, safe on the polished, newly-renovated Lincoln Center stage.
