Jeremy Jordan is an actor. Actually, he is three actors: One’s bio explains that he was placed in an orphanage and later abused by foster parents. Another is a gay Canadian porn star. This Jeremy Jordan, though, is the real one. “I’m the only Jeremy Jordan who didn’t change his name,” he says, sipping bottled tea at a Southside Starbucks.

This Jeremy Jordan is a recent graduate of the theater program at Ithaca College. People in his milieu tell him he’s on the cusp of a breakthrough. And the evidence is in: In addition to graduating with honors and taking home the department’s award for acting musical theater, he starred in three of the college’s main stage productions; something of a rarity, because college theater programs typically try to spread work equally among students.

So here he is in Richmond, starring in the Firehouse Theatre Project’s production of “Austin’s Bridge,” the tale of a spoiled, dishonest young man who winds up working in an institution for the mentally disabled. When the play ends July 7, Jordan is off to New York to live the dream.

“They say I have a look that’s very marketable these days,” he says. In fact, people tell him he looks like Matt Damon or a young Marlon Brando, a name almost lost on the 22-year-old. “It depends on what I do with my hair, how shaven I am. I’m a shapeshifter.” Mostly, he looks most like a petite Ashton Kutcher: deep-set hazel eyes parenthesized with definitively dark eyebrows and a dimply smile. “I think I have a decent enough voice, and I’m decent enough looking. I have the tools. I was lucky enough to get a good agent.” In fact, after displaying his wares this spring in a showcase for emerging talent, he had a choice of agents.

Jordan’s conversation is peppered with mentions of luck; an irony in Jordan’s case. “It’s funny that I say ‘lucky’ because I’m not a big believer in luck. You make your fate. You earn what you get, or you don’t earn it and you don’t get it.” So why all the references to the four-letter word? “I guess it’s me being humble. It’s just a word associated with trying to diminish ego.”

Jordan already has a leg up in the game. He locked in the part of Austin while still a college student, when playwright Bill C. Davis cast him in a stage reading of the play. As the reading process progressed, Davis decided that Jordan was right on key as his protagonist. “We sort of connected. He thought that I really got the character,” Jordan says. (Davis also wrote “Mass Appeal,” the Broadway hit which later became a movie starring Jack Lemmon, as well as the less-heralded Broadway production, “Dancing in the End Zone.” ) Eventually, Davis hopes to stage the play in New York, Jordan says. And its world premiere in Richmond hopefully will bring the young lead another step closer to nailing the part in a big-time production up the road.
After the show here closes, Jordan will collect his belongings from his family’s home in Corpus Christi and head straight to The City, where he’ll go to auditions and look for somewhere to live. In that order, since he’s bunking with friends. He’s gnashing at the tether to go. “I want to get there and start my life,” he says. So does his agent. “They’re calling all the time, asking when I’m going to get to New York.”

Jordan is confident, but he also is a realist. “Until I open a show and it’s received by the audience, I have the most awful fear that people will hate me,” he admits. “It’s not really a fear of failure; it’s more a hope not to fail.” And even while he tries to stifle his ego, he can’t—won’t—squelch it altogether. “It’s that central ego that drives you, and if they critique your character, they’re critiquing you. It penetrates to the core. Luckily,” he says again, “I haven’t had awful reviews. But I’m waiting for that review that says, ‘Everybody was good. But what was Jeremy thinking?!?’”

“Austin’s Bridge” at the Firehouse Theater
1609 W. Broad St., 355.2001
Thur-Sat 8pm, Sun 4pm (Through July 7)
http://www.firehousetheatre.org