Luke
Ferrante
Multidisciplinary Actor
About
Luke is a rising sophomore at Harvard College, where he is studying Theater and Economics. This summer, he is working at the New London Barn Playhouse as the Patron Management Associate, supporting front-of-house operations, box office management, and patron services.
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Over the past year at Harvard, Luke assisted the stage management team for The Odyssey at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and served as an Assistant Stage Manager for Harvard’s production of Anastasia.
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He graduated high school from Interlochen Arts Academy, where he spent three years studying theater. Luke's last performance at Interlochen was as Laertes in their 2024 production of Hamlet. The previous summer, he performed in the intensive ensemble of Chess at The Muny in St. Louis. Luke also participated in Interlochen's interdisciplinary and collaborative production, Mukti, which premiered at Lincoln Center. This experience solidified his passion not only for performing but also for contributing to the creative and organizational processes behind theatrical productions. He spent over six months devising and developing the show alongside peers and faculty, gaining firsthand experience in project development.
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Outside of theater, Luke enjoys boating with his family, hiking, and streaming reality TV on the couch with his dog, Jet.
"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.
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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.
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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.