A young man’s journey from the suburbs to the city, and the importance of remembering your roots.
By Millie Gibbons
From inside his West Village apartment in New York City, Spencer Jones can hear the rumble of construction, the roaring of sirens, and the cheers and cries of the schoolyard below him. “It all kind of blends together after a while,” he says. “It just becomes a part of your soundtrack, I guess.” Jones, a 26-year-old actor and playwright now based in NYC, was born at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, the hospital his mother still works at today. I caught up with Jones in the midst of the ongoing preparation for his debut one-man show Dead Dreamers, which is making its first appearances on Zoom, followed by a 2-week run later this year at Brooklyn’s The Vino Theatre.
The show itself deals with the ideas of innocence, the joys of dreaming big as a young child, and the loss of innocence we face when we realize that those dreams might notactually come true. A funny, poignant, heartbreaking yet hopeful piece of writing that I personally cannot wait to see through the lens of Jones’ performance.
A graduate of Canadian Martyrs Catholic Elementary School, as well as Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School, Jones is extremely grateful for the childhood he had in Burlington. “I look at the lives of the kids here in NYC and I just become so thankful for the space we had, the freedom to explore, and the peace of mind that our parents had, knowing that we’d be safe while out and about.”
Jones studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in both Los Angeles and New York, and is coming off of a fantastic post-graduation year in 2022, performing off-Broadway in Stefan Diethelm’s play Neutrality at the New York Theater Festival, as well as Blind Cupid Shakespeare’s adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, in which he played the notorious villain Tybalt, receiving much praise from BroadwayWorld.com. He attributes his love for Shakespeare to his grade 12 English class, in which students were tasked with reading King Lear aloud. In an effort to make the task more engaging, Jones would put on ridiculous voices, and read the text in an over-the-top dramatic style. Eventually, he was reading for every single character in front of the class and performing an entire one-man adaptation. “Everyone (myself included) figured that Shakespeare was boring and difficult to understand. However, when it’s presented how it’s supposed to be, on a stage by a performer who understands the language and can deliver it in a clear way to the audience, that’s when his work comes to life.”
Jones has gone from performing inside his high school classroom to standing on the stage of the Delacorte Theater, the world-famous theatre inside of Manhattan’s Central Park, known for hosting the yearly “Shakespeare in the Park” festival. Jones was a double for Danai Gurira (The Walking Dead) during technical rehearsals for The Public Theatre’s production of Richard III and was able to perform Shakespeare’s soliloquies on the same stage as countless other legendary performers. “It was a chance to be exactly where I dream of being. To get a taste of what I want the future to hold and the motivation to pursue it that much harder.”
Like most artists, Jones dreams big. But as he gets older, he enjoys the idea of dreaming small almost as much. “Sure, I love the idea of a Broadway stage or a Scorsese film set, and trust me I’m doing everything in my power to get there one day, but I also love the idea of coming back to Burlington in the future and working on something there. The Performing Arts Centre is a magnificent space and I think it would be a fantastic full circle moment to be able perform where it all started.” Jones’ dream project? A performance of Sam Shepard’s True West starring alongside fellow former Burlington high school student Ryan Gosling. You heard it here first.
For Jones, coming back home every so often is an integral part of surviving the chaos of New York City. “I need the quietness, the familiarity, that unmistakable feeling of home. It helps me to reset everything.” He also talks about how important it is to see the people that motivate him to keep going. “My parents, sister, and my best friends all live in Burlington. Going back always reminds me of how I want to make them proud, and that no matter what success I may or may not achieve, they’ll always be my roots.”
Check out Jones’ website here and keep an eye out for tickets to Dead Dreamers.
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Millie Gibbons is an actress, writer, and filmmaker from a small village in Suffolk, U.K., now based in New York City. Millie has upcoming appearances in feature-length films such as Art of Diversion, L’Aura, and an upcoming lead role in Back to the Present. Her film “Deadly Sinner,” which she wrote, directed, and starred in, won Best Film at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts Screen Awards. Millie has been published in Voyage ATL as well the L.A. Note, and is currently writing her feature-length screenplay The Melton Perspective. Her website is milliegibbons.com.
