Actor Matthew Jeffers, who has a rare form of dwarfism, mines life experiences for his roles onstage.
When he was 5 months old, Baltimore native Matthew Jeffers needed a tracheotomy to repair a respiratory compression. At age 1, he was diagnosed with what his doctors coined “Matthew’s Dwarfism.”
Throughout his life, Jeffers — who stands 4 feet 2 and weighs 80 pounds — has undergone 20 surgeries, some related to the tracheotomy, others to repair his bow knees and adjust his hips because of his dwarfism.
But the 26-year-old Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School graduate doesn’t believe in letting anything or anyone get in his way. Five years ago, Jeffers, then a student at Towson University, wrote a letter to Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh about overcoming adversity, prompting a news segment on ESPN that featured Jeffers’ adage, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude. … A positive attitude is the most powerful combatant to life’s misfortunes.”
Jeffers, who grew up in Pikesville, moved to New York after graduating from college and was soon taking on roles at such prestigious theaters as The Flea, Dixon Place and Playwrights Horizons. He is currently appearing in his first off-Broadway role, in Caryl Churchill’s “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” at New York Theatre Workshop, through May 27.
Jeffers lives with his girlfriend in Brooklyn, where, according to his stage bio, he cooks “delicious vegan food.”
Jmore: When did you decide to become an actor?
Jeffers: I think it was kind of this subconscious calling. I wanted to be in the sports world and realized there wasn’t really a place for me there, realistically speaking. My mother was always telling me, “You’re such a great personality, I think it would transfer so well to the stage.” So I decided to do Charlie Brown in eighth grade, and I played Schroeder. I remember that first bow. I know it sounds cliché, but that moment, to be there, to create this relationship with the audience, felt really good. It was a slow burn from there.
Were you ever bullied?
I had a rough time up until second grade. I had to kind of grow up fast. But when I got to Beth Tfiloh, I was genuinely embraced and loved and treated with respect. … Certainly everywhere else I went in public, I’d encounter stares and comments under the breath, but Beth Tfiloh was kind of my safe space. They allowed me to thrive in acting because I could feel 100 percent authentic in my own shoes, which allows me to honor being in someone else’s shoes.
How did it inform you as an actor?
I’ve lived a life that a lot of people haven’t experienced. I think those experiences have helped me to channel certain viewpoints and behaviors in the characters I play. You don’t fool anyone when you are on-screen or onstage. It’s about what you are able to give from your own life to this fictional character that makes it three-dimensional.
Are you cast for a range of parts or specifically in roles for short-statured people?
That’s kind of the macro question, and navigating that is not linear. At Towson, I played Tom in “The Glass Menagerie.” For a local university to be willing to cast a short-statured person in that kind of role …
So much of that play is about Laura’s disability. Did your Tom express more empathy than the usual Tom — who is quite cruel?
We didn’t play it that way. I could play it fully the way Tennessee Williams wrote the part. What I expected was through my work and my acting to have the audience forget completely that I’m not 5-5. The first play I did in New York, Ed Iskandar cast me as God in this six-hour biblical show. Right off the bat, to come in contact with a director who would use someone who is built a little differently in a featured role is encouraging. It reassured me that I was going to be able to find work.
At New York Theatre Workshop, the theater and director have been so open-minded, embracing diversity and bringing different looks onstage. It’s the kind of place that fosters growth for people who aren’t straight white males.
Peter Dinklage is considered a macho sex symbol.
I wish I was as sexy as Peter Dinklage. There’s always been this curiosity and fascination about a short person. Even in “Game of Thrones,” at the end of the day, you are reminded that he is short. Characters repeatedly refer to him as the dwarf — short-statured people are kind of the last bastion of socially acceptable prejudice. But things are changing.
Are there roles where you’d draw the line?
I’ve tried to emulate and follow the path that Peter Dinklage has already trail-blazed, say no to roles like Santa’s helper and the Gremlin.
What’s “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” about?
It tells the story of the social climate of England in the 1640s when everything was up for grabs and anything was possible. You have this community of people from different walks of life who are at a moment of reckoning. It has these kind of vignettes that share how these people handle this upheaval in the social structure — from the aristocrats to the beggars. Though there are 25 or so characters in the show, it’s a cast of six. We’re always slipping in and out of characters.
On the Ravens video, you talked about your late mother, Marcie, who was very ill at the time.
That aired in January 2013. She passed away the following June. It was an absolute roller coaster that year — dealing with the loss of my mother, committing to a career in New York, dealing with the small flurry of attention from the Ravens. I use my mother in every audition I go into, and every second I’m onstage or on-screen. I use the gifts she gave of confidence, of believing in myself, of feeling that I’m enough. So much of acting is believing you’re enough. My parents raised me to believe that I’m more than enough.
Martha Thomas is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.
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