Interview: Jacob Schorsch in THE 39 STEPS at Princeton Summer Theater

Princeton Summer Theater’s (PST) 2026 season continues with The 39 Steps, a noir farce full of danger, mystery, and laughs. production is being presented through July 18th at the Hamilton Murray Theater.  Showtimes are on Thursdays to Saturdays at 7:30pm and there are also matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2:00pm.

The 39 Steps, adapted by Patrick Barlow, first debuted in 2005 and was later Tony-nominated for Best Play in 2008. The show is based on the 1935 Hitchcock film, a mystery thriller about a man who is mistakenly swept up into a world of spies and murder. The play, inspired by the original idea of Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon, remakes Hitchcock’s world into one portrayed by only 4 actors, creating a whirlwind of stagecraft and fun.

Broadwayworld had the pleasure of interviewing Jacob Schorsch who plays the lead role of Richard Hannay in the The 39 Steps.

Jacob Schorsch is an actor and musician from New York who graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2025. Recent credits include: “The Bacchae” (Tisch Drama Stage), “The Mirex” (Hamptons International Film Festival), “Barbecue” (Stella Adler), “End in Four Parts” (Mark Morris / ReVenue), and his own musical “Worker B” (NYU Experimental Theater Wing). He can also be seen in the short film “An Encounter” (Palm Springs Film Festival, dir. Abe Kaye).
 

When did you first realize your penchant for acting?

Since I was 6, I grew up doing musical theater thanks to my older sisters. What began as a hobby only became serious for me when I was 18 and attended a summer program at Stella Adler. There, I discovered the stage as the place I felt most alive - all your neurons are firing, and you’re awake to what the world and others are constantly throwing at you. From there, I started to watch more films, see more theatre, learn about the craft and technique and a year later I transferred to NYU. After that initial spark, it was impossible to pursue anything else. 

We'd love to know a little about your time at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Studying at Tisch gave me an unbelievable acting foundation, one in which I learned not only how to be a vessel for other voices, but how to cultivate my own artistry and trust the impulse of every moment.

I spent 3 years at Tisch, studying in three different studios. I spent 2 years at Stella Adler, a summer at the International Theater Workshop in Amsterdam, and a year at the Experimental Theater Wing (ETW). From Adler, I learned to love language, to appreciate the beauty and structure of acting as a discipline, and to build a foundation in Stanislavski-based scene study. In Amsterdam, I got to branch off from this foundation through clowning, mask work, Brechtian storytelling, physical acting, Roy Hart vocal technique, and many other nontraditional ways to tell stories. Through this, I learned to take ownership of my work and break the pedestal and mystique I’d built around artistry. This journey took me to the physical and devising-based curriculum of ETW, where I studied Grotowski, threw my body around (positive!), and created new work every week. I’m grateful to have worked at all 3 studios because I hope to experience and create all kinds of art; I love Chekhov and dance theatre, Shakespeare and Robert Wilson, both the classical and experimental forms, mainstream and underground.

Have you had any particular mentors?

I’ve had so many amazing mentors. One is Kevin Kuhlke, a director and teacher who had an uncanny ability to cultivate a room where people thrived artistically. He’s not hands on, he’s not judgement oriented, or even product oriented. He assembles a group that cares deeply about exploring and gives them the freedom to go at their ideas with 110% of their energy.  Post-grad, I take this attitude of curiosity into any room or project I’m in.

Lisa Sokolov and Andy Arden-Reese were two teachers of mine at ETW in voice and acting, respectively. I appreciated them immensely because they both pushed and pried at what is underneath the surface of a performance. “Don’t be a performing pup,” Lisa would say, reflecting the need for artists to delve into something. We’d spend hours analyzing vowels, consonants, melody, physical gestures, all in the effort to say something, to unleash the essence of the songwriter’s idea. The only thing worse than bad art is okay art.

Tell us about your role as Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps and how you prepared for the role.

Richard Hannay is a staple of 1930s Britain, modeled on Sherlock but a spoof on the archetype. He’s bored by the mundanity of life and yearns for adventure, beautiful women, and excitement. And the play sets him down that path exactly. As the straight man in the farce who’s constantly searching for something, that’s translated into an explosive physicality: I’m always running, lurching from one environment to the next, trying to find my footing in whatever weird world I’m in. Going back to my training, it’s my warmup before every show that enabled me to jump into that physicality: a combo of Grotowski forms and vocal exercises that I’ve picked up along the years. 

 

Another key part of my preparation was the period-appropriate dialect. He’s a gentleman who speaks with a developed vocabulary and cultured sensibility. Among the films I watched in preparation were Pygmalion (1938) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), and noted the fast pace, frontal placement, and clipped nature of the characters’ speech. Consonants were essential, and as part of my pre-show ritual I’d spend a lot of time getting my articulators going.  All of this preparation enables me to step on stage and be able to go: to trust my physicality, my instincts, and my embodied performance. What’s so interesting about Hannay is that he diverges from the type: moving away from the posh and distant English gentleman from the period, he begins to truly care and invest in the world around him. Ultimately, it’s an exciting character and before every show, I’m getting my body into a state and once I’m in that state, I know who I am. 

Princeton Summer Theater is a very popular seasonal venue.  How do you like working there?

PST has been wonderful --  you eat together, perform together, relax together, and you become both a family and a finely tuned machine. I had a teacher who would talk about her experience in a rep company in her early twenties, and I was very jealous of the opportunity to work on the entire Shakespeare canon in such a rigorous way, touring one show while rehearsing the next. In today’s world Princeton Summer Theater is the closest to a rep company you can get. We’ve only been here for a month and are already working on a third show, each one an entirely different style of performance, which has been a joy. It’s a gorgeous place and I’m grateful that I get to wake up and go to sleep thinking about art. 

 We know you have a very talented cast and creative team.  Tell us a little about them.

My castmates are amazing, ready to move fast and adjust at breakneck speed. This show is a wild ride, and it’s been incredible to have such a strong network of trust: we’ve been able to play around, have fun, and make the show our own. Every show feels like riding into battle together: all you can do is look to your left and hope your friend is along for the ride. And this cast is! 

The technical team is awesome -- the pace Princeton Summer Theater requires is intense; we leave Sunday morning with a New York City apartment up, and return to a false proscenium Monday morning. The stage management and run crew team are efficient and amazing in getting this technically heavy show on its feet. The designers were incredible -- we’re lit by hundreds of cues for over 139 characters and dressed in hundreds of costumes all to create this thrill ride of a show. It’s always a reminder the production is a lot bigger than yourself.

What would you like audiences to know about the show?

It’s a farce. It’s funny, we hope. Physical comedy will never die because there’s a simplicity when one person slips on a banana peel and the other one looks at the audience. There’s a reason why clowns have been around forever. The production quality is impressive, the technical feats intense. Everyone on the team works overdrive for every show, and the final hour and a half product is a thrill ride to behold. 

Can you share any of your future plans?

I’m doing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer called Eve and Adam. Then I’m back to New York, where I’ll audition, work on a friend’s film and develop my original projects. 

You can follow Jacob on Instagram @jacob.schorsch and visit his website https://www.jacobschorsch.com/.

To learn more about Princeton Summer Theater and to purchase tickets, please visit Princeton Summer Theater. 

Photo Credit: Yellowbelly

Need more New Jersey Theatre News in your life?
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...