In the 2022 Capital Fringe Festival, longtime DC-based actor David Bryan Jackson starred in a short run of the black comedy play A Number— which follows an anxious father who secretly clones his wayward son—alongside actor Jacob Yeh. Two years later, Jackson is reprising the role with a new co-star: his real-life son.
After seeing Max Jackson in Love, Love, Love at Studio theater earlier this year, Edge of the Universe Theater’s Stephen Jarrett, who directed the 2022 production of A Number, was impressed. He thought casting the young actor alongside his father in the dystopian play could add a new dimension to the familial themes in Caryl Churchill’s script. “The ripped-from-the headlines part of this clever, witty play is human cloning, and that’s what the intricate plot’s about,” Jarrett said in a statement. “But it’s a smokescreen hiding Churchill’s real concerns, chiefly fatherhood and the abject terror of the void.”
Max came up in a family of thespians, watching both David and his mother Lee Mikeska Gardner perform and direct in theaters across the District. Still, he wasn’t always keen on joining his parents’ profession. ”I spent all of my time in theaters waiting around for my parents to finish rehearsals—why would I want to do more of it voluntarily?” he told Washingtonian. At age 11, however, he played a ghostly child in To Hell and Back and was bit by the acting bug. Max went on to perform at a variety of local theaters and train professionally in London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he graduated from in 2022.
Although David and Max have worked on small projects before, A Number will be their first time officially on stage together. They’re the only actors during the intimate play’s hour-long runtime, which sees the father hash things out out with his replicated sons in a series of conversations that slowly peel back layers of the family’s complicated past.
“It’s nice to have roles that you can dig into with an actor that you can trust, so it’s been great to take this on with my dad, who I obviously already love anyways,” says Max, who also has been living at home in the area with his father and stepmother.
“I get up in the morning, have some coffee, go to pretend to be a different father, then come home and have dinner with my real son,” David says. “It’s interesting.”
While Max says a “strong relationship” allows father and son to separate themselves from the dark source material, the play’s existential take on fatherhood can sometimes weigh heavy on David. “Fortunately, I don’t think there’s anything lurking in my past quite like the character in this play, but it does make you think about those universal concerns that all parents have,” he says. “You always wonder if you’ve ever done anything that might be detrimental to your children. You never stop second guessing.”
After growing up watching David monologue on local stages, Max says he likely learned some of his father’s acting techniques by osmosis. For David, seeing his son’s process up close is a new experience—one he’s been relishing. “It’s a real lesson for me everyday,” he says. “He is very detail-oriented, meticulous, and disciplined, in a way that I don’t know that I am. I actually asked him to tell me if I was doing something I should change. He fortunately hasn’t come up with anything yet.”
A Number opens August 8 and runs through September 1st, Thursdays through Sundays at Gunston Arts Center Theatre II (2700 S. Lang St, Arlington). Tickets available now.
