A Heavy Performance
Chip Lamb, Theater Director
In June 1994, Bob Sloat asked me if I would dress up as William Peck and speak to the students as part of Pomfret’s Centennial celebration. I had acted for enough school audiences to know this would not work. But I agreed to write a play about the founding of Pomfret if there was enough of a story.
Over the next three months, I researched William Peck’s life at St. Mark’s and his subsequent departure to start a school of his own. With the help of faculty and staff at both schools and Nick Noble, a history teacher at the Fay School in Southborough, I was captivated by Peck’s audacity and tried to capture this spirit in an hour-long one-act. The play, “I’m a Master, I Believe,” was performed in Clark Chapel for the entire school on Founder’s Day. I played Peck; my wife, Susan, played Harriet Peck; and John Stebbins, husband of Academic Dean Janet Stebbins, played Joseph Burnett, founder of St Mark’s. There were also four students who played a variety of roles, including a boy from the early years, Harry Williams, from whom it is believed Peck caught a fatal case of the flu.
The play appeared to be a great success and I was quickly approached by Sloatie to perform the play again the following spring for alumni weekend. I agreed. We gathered the same cast six months later and prepared for the performance. In the play, Peck scoops up a very sick Harry Williams and carries him to the infirmary. What I had underestimated is how much weight a fourth-form boy can gain in six months. When it came time to lift the student off the floor of the chapel, I couldn’t do it. There was a genuine moment of panic. With very real beads of sweat running down my face, I managed, just barely, to carry the boy off. William Peck’s health did indeed look compromised at that performance, but it had very little to do with acting.
