When Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose opens “Waitress” on April 11, it will likely be a momentous event, the beginning of the end for Kevin Hauge, who’s retiring this summer season after 30 years because the youth theater firm’s creative director.
“For a lot of people, CMT and Kevin Hauge are synonymous,” mentioned CMT San Jose Managing Director Dana Zell. “That’s pretty amazing for an artistic director.”
The Sara Bareilles musical is likely one of the final two exhibits that Hauge will direct on the Montgomery Theatre earlier than he takes his last bows this summer season. His final present might be “Disney’s Frozen” in late July, a Mainstage Manufacturing for highschool and college-age performers. However “Waitress” — which has 9 performances by means of April 20 — might be one in every of CMT’s Marquee exhibits, with a solid that options working grownup actors and CMT alumni, lots of whom grew up with Hauge directing them on stage.
Creative Director Kevin Hauge, who’s retiring after 30 seasons, walks off the stage on the finish of the Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose annual gala at San Jose Civic Auditorium in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Space Information Group)
Individuals watch a efficiency of “Chicago” through the Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose annual gala at San Jose Civic Auditorium in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Space Information Group)
Creative Director Kevin Hauge, middle, proper, works with actors through the gown rehearsal of the Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose’s manufacturing of “The Who’s Tommy” on the Montgomery Theater in San Jose, California, on Thursday, March 1, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Space Information Group)
Creative Director Kevin Hauge, proper, works with actors through the gown rehearsal of the Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose’s manufacturing of “The Who’s Tommy” on the Montgomery Theater in San Jose, California, on Thursday, March 1, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Space Information Group)
Creative Director Kevin Hauge works with actors through the gown rehearsal of the Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose’s manufacturing of “The Who’s Tommy” on the Montgomery Theater in San Jose, California, on Thursday, March 1, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Space Information Group)
Creative Director Kevin Hauge, middle, works with actors through the gown rehearsal of the Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose’s manufacturing of “The Who’s Tommy” on the Montgomery Theater in San Jose, California, on Thursday, March 1, 2018. (LiPo Ching/Bay Space Information Group)
Ryan Vasquez performs through the VIP reception of CMT San Jose’s Cabaret
Night time gala, with Creative Director Kevin Hauge watching and Mason Kimont on
piano. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Space Information Group)
Longtime CMT Director Kevin Hauge offers suggestions throughout
a rehearsal on Nov. 16 of Kids’s Musical Theater Marquee Manufacturing of Disney’s NEWSIES The Musical!
The present runs Dec. 1-10 on the Montgomery Theater in downtown San Jose.
(Jacqueline Ramseyer/Workers Photographer)
Longtime CMT Creative Director Kevin Hauge offers suggestions throughout
a Nov. 16 rehearsal of CMT’s Marquee manufacturing of ‘Disney’s Newsies the Musical.’
The present runs Dec. 1-10 on the Montgomery Theater in downtown San Jose.
(Jacqueline Ramseyer/Workers Photographer)
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Creative Director Kevin Hauge, who’s retiring after 30 seasons, walks off the stage on the finish of the Kids’s Musical Theater San Jose annual gala at San Jose Civic Auditorium in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Space Information Group)
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The applause must be deafening and the standing ovation backbreaking to correctly acknowledge what Hauge has meant to the area’s youth theater and the hundreds of younger performers he has labored with in lots of of exhibits over these many years.
Hauge arrived within the South Bay in 1982 because the choreographer for exhibits at Nice America in Santa Clara, and over the subsequent 5 years he additionally labored as a choreographer and director for Kids’s Musical Theater, which had been based in 1968. It was throughout this time that Zell first encountered him when she performed a Winkie in a 1985 manufacturing of “The Wiz.”
“Even then, he wasn’t the artistic director but he had come back a few times to direct individual shows,” she recalled. “But being part of a Kevin show was a big deal.”
His job took him to Texas for a number of years, the place he obtained married and began a household. That’s when Michael Mulcahy — then a former CMT performer who’d taken on the position of govt director and is now a San Jose metropolis councilmember — known as asking if he may very well be an emergency fill-in director for his or her summer season present, “Guys and Dolls.”
“It was the most important eight weeks of my life because it was in that eight weeks, as a young man in my early 30s, I realized this is where I had to be. This was where I was meant to be,” Hauge mentioned final month at a gathering of the Rotary Membership of San Jose. “I was meant to create art, certainly, but it was more important for me to work with young people and share with them what I had learned.”
Eighteen months later, Mulcahy and CMT’s board employed Hauge as the corporate’s first creative director. Underneath Hauge’s tenure, CMT expanded — now producing 11 exhibits a 12 months for various age teams, in addition to summer season camps and courses — and pushed the boundaries of what “children’s theater” means with high quality productions of exhibits like “Les Miserables,” “Billy Elliott,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “Rent” and “American Idiot.”
CMT alums have gone on to behave on Broadway, in nationwide touring exhibits, on TV and in films. The corporate’s work has been acknowledged by the Nationwide Endowment for the Arts, and Hague was an honorable point out for the Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre Schooling in 2016.
Hauge says these are issues to be very pleased with, however he’s equally pleased with CMT performers who go on to be docs, lecturers, engineers, nurses or any numerous life selections.
“We are about life lessons that we give young people through the performing arts,” he mentioned, ticking off expertise like time administration and drawback fixing. “We want you to use these universal life lessons in your future.”
Alex Brightman and Ryan Vasquez, two CMT alums who’ve gone onto Broadway success and Tony Award nominations, praised Hauge in a video they recorded for CMT’s annual fundraising gala, held on the San Jose Civic on Feb. 1.
“One of the things we both shared is one of the things Kevin taught us early on at CMT, which is community theater is exactly that,” mentioned Brightman, who was starring alongside facet Vasquez within the manufacturing of “Schmigadoon!” that month on the Kennedy Middle. “It’s about community, and we’ve held onto that through the many shows we’ve done over the many years.”
That gala was very a lot a tribute to Hauge, stuffed with performances by greater than 100 actors, singers and dancers in numbers from the previous three many years of exhibits. Some arrived on flights from across the nation, with little time to rehearse earlier than they stepped again into roles they could have final performed extra a decade in the past or extra. Every attendee obtained a be aware thanking them signed “Bravo, K,” a nod to the inspirational notes Hauge offers to his younger performers.
For a lot of the brunch and dinner exhibits, when he wasn’t on stage, Hauge watched the performances from the again — along with his expressions at occasions extra like these of a proud father or mother than a stage director.
“Thirty years ago, I had that epiphany of saying, ‘Oh, I think I can really help these kids,’ but anybody who’s been in the room with that group of folks at CMT knows it’s the kids who really helped me,” Hauge mentioned. “They have given me energy and purpose and an interest in life that I never thought I could have.
“And I really count my days until I’ll be done, but I know that the next days for the Children’s Theater will be remarkable, and I can’t wait to see what they do.”
ARIAS IN THE AFTERNOON: The San Jose Girl’s Membership is celebrating its a hundred and thirtieth anniversary by bringing again one in every of its hottest occasions — the Opera with the Stars luncheon — for the primary time for the reason that COVID-19 pandemic. The April 10 occasion will embody performances by Opera San Jose resident artists, who ought to sound nice due to the acoustics of the historic clubhouse’s Landmark Ballroom.
Proceeds from the occasion will profit scholarships for tutorial and vocal college students at San Jose State College. The vocal scholarships had been began by the late Alma Taylor, and a legacy from her property has stored them going, however this 12 months it can restart funding for the educational scholarships.
Tickets are $80 for the total lunch adopted by the efficiency, or individuals with a tighter schedule can go for dessert and the efficiency for $25. Tickets can be found at operalunch.eventbrite.com or by calling 408-294-6919.
Initially Revealed: April 5, 2025 at 6:30 AM PDT
