Maybe because her Pittsburgh Steelers jersey made her feel athletic, Conestoga Valley art teacher Kim Stamm had an unusual request Friday for a school visitor.
A gaggle of teachers and students was posing for pictures with the visitor, but rather than just do that, she said, “Let’s do something funny.”
“Make a funny face?” he asked.
“No, jump on my back,” she suggested.
And that’s what Jonathan Groff, the now-established acting star of Broadway, film and television, did during his visit back to Conestoga Valley Middle School on Friday afternoon.
Said Stamm, a middle school teacher wearing a No. 86 Hines Ward jersey for the in-school program: “I was going to ask (Groff) to wear the jersey, but I didn’t know if he was an Eagles fan.”
No word on that, but Groff definitely was “a gentleman, real down-to-earth, just a good soul,” the teacher said.
And that seemed to be the unanimous opinion as Groff returned to the middle school where he first realized he could make a go of it in the competitive acting field.
He spoke to a full middle school assembly and also to some current-day acting students, the cast of April’s high school production of “The Sound of Music.”
“It’s such an interesting thing when what you wish to come true comes true, and the dreams you set out to achieve you actually are lucky enough to experience firsthand,” Groff said.
He talked about “the importance of keeping engaged with that hunger I felt back in eighth grade,” when CV Middle School teacher Sue Fisher told him he could be an actor, “and that hunger that I felt when I moved to New York to become an actor is still important.”
Groff, who will be 26 next month, is in the new Jeff Lipsky film “Twelve Thirty,” playing what he admitted Friday is a “shady character,” an ambitious young professional whose attraction for a family’s daughter causes havoc for the entire family.
This spring, Groff will have a featured role in the new Robert Redford film “The Conspirator,” and Friday he called the director and well-known actor a joy to work with.
“He was real easy to talk to, no ego whatsoever … really nice and totally about the work, really a pleasure to meet,” said Ronks native Groff, who is just back in the United States after six months in London performing in the play “Deathtrap.”
In “The Conspirator,” Groff plays a man who lives in the boarding house where Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, plotted his attack.
Groff, a 2003 CV graduate, was barely four years out of school when he was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in the play “Spring Awakening,” and only two years later won praise for his first film, “Taking Woodstock,” directed by Oscar-winning Ang Lee.
To have someone make it so spectacularly shows that “as long as you think you can do it and work hard, you can go as far as Hollywood and Broadway,” CV High senior Emily Smucker said.
To get to those places, Groff told “The Sound of Music” cast, use any chance “you have to be in front of a live audience. That’s the best teacher, taking advantage of any opportunity that you have.
“When you do that, life will take you where it’s supposed to take you,” Groff said, adding that it’s important to have family and friends and interests far outside of acting so “you can remember there’s more to life than this (latest) audition.”
Groff said his dream role could be anything from playing Hamlet (“every male actor wants to play that”) to being one of those super-hero guys who “do that scene where they run across rooftops. … I have this weird desire to do that,” he said, as he and his audience laughed.
