(no subject)
This doesnt really apply to DC peeps.
NH friends, i don't know if you knew him, but Jared Nathan died yesterday in a drunk driving accident. he was a year behind us at BG, i did plays with him from when i was about 6 to when i was 18. He was on Zoom. I'm linking to the article. He really was the nicest guy.
NASHUA - On stage, Jared Nathan has been a hilarious pirate, a singing star or a changeling prince, and on TV he was a “Zoom” star. But as news spread Thursday that the 21-year-old Nashua actor had died in a car accident, it was the off-stage Jared who was mourned.
“He was just a great guy; always laughing, a real comedian. Everyone loved to be around him. . . . It wasn’t that he demanded to be the center of attention. It’s that by nature of who he was, he ended up the center of attention,” said Craig Faulkner, production manager at Seacoast Repertory Theater in Portsmouth, where Nathan starred in two musicals. “You can’t find anybody to say anything about him that isn’t nice - not anybody.”
Nathan died early Thursday from injuries sustained in a car accident in Hollis.
“He was incredibly talented, but he was always polite, always said hi to people, just so down-to-Earth it was incredible. He was the absolute nicest kid you’d ever want to meet,” said Tom Grilli of Nashua, former president of the Peacock Players, the local youth theater group that featured Nathan in a number of productions.
“It’s a cliche, but he’s the kind of guy you’d want your daughter to marry,” added Grilli.
“He kind of reminded me of Matt Damon in that way,” said Kate Taylor, an executive producer at PBS television who knew Nathan in 1999, when he was on the after-school show “Zoom,” and who remembers him well. “He was just a really nice guy who everybody liked and was willing to share his talent, but wasn’t somebody looking to hog the limelight.”
ENLARGE PHOTO
Courtesy photo
Jared Nathan, who died early Thursday in a car crash in Hollis, is seen with Allison Duhamel of Nashua. Both were active in the Actorsingers.
If Nathan hadn’t entered adolescence, making him unsuitable for the TV role, “Zoom” would have loved to have had him back, she said.
“The kind of kids we were looking for were really kids who were charismatic, whose personalities would shine through, but also kids who could be team players and listen as well as lead. He was all those things - plus he had a fabulous sense of humor,” she said.
Even in the classroom, a place where charming extroverts aren’t always appreciated, Nathan was a hit.
“He was really good at mimicking people, had a real knack for picking out those little nuances. He’d come into my class and start imitating someone and I would know instantly who he was doing,” said Linda Brodeur, principal of Bishop Guertin High School.
Nathan attended BG for two years before switching to Walnut Hill, a prestigious performing arts high school in Natick, Mass.
The son of Jeffrey Nathan, a local physician, and June Nathan, Jared performed on stage for years for local groups like Junior Actorsingers and the Peacock Players. He was in the 1999 cast of the PBS television show “Zoom,” when that program returned to the air after 21 years.
After graduating from Walnut Hill in 2004, he attended The Juilliard School, a performing arts college in New York City. He was last on stage in Nashua last August, part of the Peacock Players alumni show.
On the theatrical side, those who knew Nathan were unstinting in their praise of his skills as actor, either serious or comic, and singer, as well as his work ethic.
“Of all the actors I know, I never had any doubts that if Jared chose to be on Broadway, or anywhere, he would be the one to do it. He had intelligence, talent, and he was a good-looking guy,” said Elliott Baker of Durham, a playwright whose version of “Dr. Doolittle” was premiered by the Peacock Players.
Nathan brought down the house in that show, recalled Grilli.
“He was the leader of this gang of misfit pirates; it was absolutely hysterical,” recalled Grilli, a former editor at The Telegraph. “If Jared came on, you knew the scene was going to be good.”
“He did it through his work ethic. . . . He was a quiet leader, the kind who led by his actions, not so much by his words. He just did it,” said Joe Cabral, head of the theater department at the Walnut Hill school, who directed Nathan in a number of productions. “I cannot say enough about his special he was. He was the kind of kid that at the end of rehearsal, would always say ‘thank you’.”
At Seacoast Repertory, Faulker said Nathan shone even among crowds of up-and-coming actors.
“He was gifted, there is no other word - he was one of those actors that just had something special. Comedy or drama, it was completely sincere. He had a gift; it never felt like acting,” he said. “I felt very confident that he was going to go wherever he wanted to go.”
Back in Nashua, Nathan’s former principal agreed.
“I always told him that he was going to make it big, and I wanted to be on the front row of his first premier on Broadway,” Brodeur said.