Hometown
Seoul, South Korea

College
Columbia University

 

Nathan Ko remembers being intimidated by the thought of getting on stage when he was a freshman taking an acting class with theater director David McCamish. By the end of his junior year, Nathan had written and performed a one-person play.

“Throughout my four years here Mr. McCamish continued to tell me the same lesson — keep the judge off your shoulder. Be comfortable with vulnerability and trust yourself,” Nathan says. “After four years of working with Mr. McCamish in acting classes or on main-stage productions, the biggest lesson I’ve gotten from theater is don’t worry about being judged.”

That lesson carried over to all aspects of Nathan’s experience at Loomis Chaffee. “I remember my freshman year,” Nathan shares. “I was scared to meet people and say hi to my classmates.” Four years later he was chosen by his peers to be the Commencement class speaker.

“My mother had no idea how this happened,” Nathan says. “I went from that anxious kid to public speaker, and I thank the Theater Department so much.”

Nathan had little acting experience before coming to the Island from South Korea. The writing program at Loomis fueled his initial interest in the school. He wanted to improve his writing and critical thinking skills. “Being a writer at Loomis … has been a huge part of my identity,” Nathan says.

Nathan wrote opinion pieces and feature pieces for The Log, the student newspaper, and as a senior he was a theater critic for the paper. He also entered a New York Times student contest for profile writing as a junior and was one of the 10 winners. His piece was on Kim Gyoo-sik of South Korea, an artist who found out he was dying from cancer.

“As I interviewed him, he was talking about the necessity of creating art when you feel like you are in the moment, and he felt like he did not have much time after his diagnosis,” Nathan says. “That spoke a lot to me. He talked about how many people pose a hypothetical: ‘If you only have a few months left what would you do with your life,’ but that was his reality. It was a moving story.”

Nathan’s writing skills and his development as a critical thinker played key roles in his first one-person play. “I had no playwriting experience, but I knew that due to the writing instruction I received here, I could do a pretty good job,” Nathan says.

He pointed to his creative writing class with English teacher Sangyeop Kim. “He is so knowledgeable and able to explain complicated writing concepts in easy ways to grasp,” Nathan says. “It is one of those classes — you get out of it what you want — and I cherished it so much.”

Nathan’s one-person play in May of 2022 was the first theater production in the Black Box Theater in the newly opened John D. and Alexandra C. Nichols Center for Theater and Dance.

“I remember when the Nichols Center opened and Mr. McCamish was giving me a tour,” Nathan says. “For some reason he was telling a story of Whoopi Goldberg doing a one-woman show on Broadway a few decades ago.”

Something clicked. “I just wanted to do a one-man show,” Nathan says. “I had never seen something like that before and didn’t know how to do it but felt I needed to do it. And later that week in my environmental science class we were talking about certain events we wanted to do to highlight environmental issues. And for me the most potent way to explore issues is theater. To me theater is a political weapon. It is a tool to fight injustice.”

He says he was disturbed by politicians who ignored climate change and by the role that profit and personal greed played.

“I remember showing up at the theater, and I was so nervous, and I hear people coming in, and I don’t know how many people are there,” Nathan recalls. “I enter the stage and I still don’t know how many people are there because it’s just a spotlight on me. It feels like I am by myself, and I go with all the things I have learned through the years. And then when the house lights go up at the end, and I see all my friends and all the teachers, and some people I don’t even know, that’s when I felt I was truly at home.”

Nathan also wrote a play this year for his senior project. He is attending Columbia University in the fall. 

“I am really excited to be in a city where I can access the arts … Lincoln Center, Broadway, off-Broadway ... and I thank the Loomis faculty,” Nathan says. “They have made me a critical thinker and someone who has confidence as an artist.” 

 

Quick Takes

Favorite spot on campus: “This may sound random because it might be expected of me to say the balcony of my dorm, which I love, and the theater, which I also love. But there is something about the hallways in Chaffee that I find particularly interesting. Most of our English classes took place in Chaffee, and I remember my junior year going through the halls of Chaffee and entering English teacher Mr. [Scott] Purdy’s classroom, and we’d talk about whatever book we were reading, and everyone had something insightful to say and challenged the ways I thought about the book. Every time I walked down the halls of Chaffee, I felt the intellect; I never felt so much energy from a hallway.”

Three things you could not live without: “The bookstore. I always went to the bookstore to get a snack before [theater] rehearsal, and it always was a granola bar and some rice crackers. And another thing I need is a book. I enjoy reading books beyond what we read in the classroom. And the people. It is always a joy seeing the diversity on campus. The people at Loomis are your caffeine. You don’t need coffee in the morning when you have the students at Loomis, and the teachers, too.”

Favorite food: “Oh, it’s easy. I love cookies. I have always loved cookies. ... I have always tried to stay away from too many sweets, but this year our pastry chef has been amazing. She has been a blessing. I don’t want to say it’s her work. It’s her artistry.”