Stage Presence
Peter Lawson Jones’ Next Act
By Linda Feagler
It didn’t take long for Peter Lawson Jones to decide where he wanted life to take him. By the time he was 12, the Cleveland native had already narrowed his choices.
“Even then, I had a pretty good sense of what my strong suits are,” Jones, 69, recalls. “My parents wanted me to be a physician, but I had no real appetite for biology and chemistry classes. So I decided on going to law school to become an elected official, then be an actor and, since my dad played in the Negro Leagues, become a professional baseball player.”
These days, the Harvard Law School graduate — former president of the Board of Cuyahoga County Commissioners, the first African-American nominated for Ohio’s lieutenant governor and a speechwriter and spokesperson for the Carter-Mondale Presidential Campaign — practices law and consults.
But he’s best known for the more than 60 stage and screen roles he’s made his own. Jones was the devoted husband and friend Jim Bono in “Fences” at Karamu House, defense attorney Henry Drummond in “Inherit the Wind” at Oberlin Summer Theater and appeared in “A Carol for Cleveland” at Cleveland Play House.
Jones, who’s acquired enough professional credentials to be a member of the prestigious Actors’ Equity and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists unions, was chosen by actor-director Corbin Bernsen for a principal role in 2011’s “25 Hill,” a drama about the All-American Soapbox Derby championships held annually in Akron. He also played opposite Tyler Perry in “Alex Cross,” guest-starred on “Chicago Fire” as a retired police officer struggling with senility, and depicted a homeless man on “Detroit 1-8-7.”
In December, Jones will once again take center stage on the big screen as Tom Hanks’ estranged best pal in “A Man Called Otto,” a comedy centering on Hanks as a cranky retiree who strikes up an unlikely friendship with his new neighbors.
“I’ve been in many films and shared the screen with many significant actors. But this upcoming role with Tom Hanks is going to be the capstone of my career. Not only is Tom Hanks a genius as an actor, he’s also one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met,” Jones says.
Spotlight
Although acting was a vocation he hoped to pursue from the get-go, Jones says the steps that led to it were “serendipitous.” His Harvard roommate invited Jones to a rehearsal for the Harvard Black Community and Student Theater Group (BlackC.A.S.T.) Jones, who later become president of the troupe, wound up reading for a production of Douglas Turner Ward’s satirical “Day of Absence,” which explores the themes of whiteness and discrimination against Black Americans through a reverse minstrel-style show of whiteface.
He was cast. The stage was set.
Role Models
Jones fondly recalls one of his breakout roles: 2008’s “Bourbon at the Border.” A collaboration between Karamu House and Ensemble Theatre staged at Cleveland Play House, it centers on a Detroit couple and what happened to them when they headed South in 1964 for a black voter-registration drive. Jones’ performance as well-meaning friend Tyrone Washington earned accolades he still chuckles about.
“I got great reviews,” he says. ”I remember one writer reported that one of our county commissioners has been secretly taking acting lessons, then went on to talk about my sexual energy on stage. It was gratifying to know that at the age of 55, I still had it.”
Although preparing for roles on stage and screen may seem to involve a similar methodology, Jones explains that since they’re different mediums, they call for diverse processes.
“The preparation is the same, but the process is different. In a play, you rehearse for weeks and play things bigger than life so that the person in the last row of the theater can see your physicality and hear your voice. In a movie, you might have five or 10 minutes of rehearsal time before you shoot the scene over and over dozens of times. When you’re doing film or TV, the audience is only a few feet away, so your expressions and gestures aren’t as grand.”
When he’s not performing, Jones crafts stories of his own. Playwriting credits include the political drama, “The Bloodless Jungle;” “The Phoenix Society,” which explores mental illness and substance abuse challenges; and “The Family Line,” in which a former basketball star comes to terms with his future. In addition to being produced at Ensemble Theatre, Karamu House, East Cleveland Theater and Beck Center for the Arts, they’ve also been performed at the 2017 National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina and Harvard University’s Loeb Drama Center.
“I don’t want my plays or any of the roles I take on to be pablum or cotton candy or reflect poorly on me as a husband, father, friend or African-American male,” Jones says. “I want them to entertain and, more importantly, enlighten.”
What’s his secret to success? Jones is succinct: “No matter what you do in life, network hard and work even harder.”
And that applies to whatever comes next.
“You’re never too old to pursue a passion of yours,” Jones says, “and I’m ready for my Act Three.”
