Let’s hear it for Kevin Hauge’s 30-year run at CMT San Jose

When Children’s Musical Theater San Jose opens “Waitress” on April 11, it will be a momentous occasion, the start of the finish for Kevin Hauge, who is retiring this summer after 30 years as the youth theater company’s artistic director.

“For a lot of people, CMT and Kevin Hauge are synonymous,” said CMT San Jose Managing Director Dana Zell. “That’s pretty amazing for an artistic director.”

The Sara Bareilles musical is one of the last two shows that Hauge will direct at the Montgomery Theatre before he takes his final bows this summer. His last show will be “Disney’s Frozen” in late July, a Mainstage Production for high school and college-age performers. But “Waitress” — which has nine performances through April 20 — will be one of CMT’s Marquee shows, with a cast that features working adult actors and CMT alumni, many of whom grew up with Hauge directing them on stage.

The applause would have to be deafening and the standing ovation backbreaking to properly recognize what Hauge has meant to the region’s youth theater and the thousands of young performers he has worked with in hundreds of shows over those decades.

Hauge arrived in the South Bay in 1982 as the choreographer for shows at Great America in Santa Clara, and over the next five years he also worked as a choreographer and director for Children’s Musical Theater, which had been founded in 1968. It was during this time that Zell first encountered him when she played a Winkie in a 1985 production 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 few years, where he got married and started a family. That’s when Michael Mulcahy — then a former CMT performer who’d taken on the role of executive director and is now a San Jose city councilmember — called asking if he could be an emergency fill-in director for their summer show, “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 said last month at a meeting of the Rotary Club 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 hired Hauge as the company’s first artistic director. Under Hauge’s tenure, CMT expanded — now producing 11 shows a year for different age groups, as well as summer camps and classes — and pushed the boundaries of what “children’s theater” means with quality productions of shows like “Les Miserables,” “Billy Elliott,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “Rent” and “American Idiot.”

CMT alums have gone on to act on Broadway, in national touring shows, on TV and in movies. The company’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, and Hague was an honorable mention for the Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre Education in 2016.

Hauge says those are things to be very proud of, but he’s equally proud of CMT performers who go on to be doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses or any countless life choices.

“We are about life lessons that we give young people through the performing arts,” he said, ticking off skills like time management and problem solving. “We want you to use these universal life lessons in your future.”

Alex Brightman and Ryan Vasquez, two CMT alums who have gone onto Broadway success and Tony Award nominations, praised Hauge in a video they recorded for CMT’s annual fundraising gala, held at 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,” said Brightman, who was starring along side Vasquez in the production of “Schmigadoon!” that month at the Kennedy Center. “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 much a tribute to Hauge, filled with performances by more than 100 actors, singers and dancers in numbers from the past three decades of shows. Some arrived on flights from around the country, with little time to rehearse before they stepped back into roles they may have last played more a decade ago or more. Each attendee received a note thanking them signed “Bravo, K,” a nod to the inspirational notes Hauge gives to his young performers.

For much of the brunch and dinner shows, when he wasn’t on stage, Hauge watched the performances from the back — with his expressions at times more like those of a proud parent 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 said. “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 Woman’s Club is celebrating its 130th anniversary by bringing back one of its most popular events — the Opera with the Stars luncheon — for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. The April 10 event will include performances by Opera San Jose resident artists, who should sound great because of the acoustics of the historic clubhouse’s Landmark Ballroom.

Proceeds from the event will benefit scholarships for academic and vocal students at San Jose State University. The vocal scholarships were started by the late Alma Taylor, and a legacy from her estate has kept them going, but this year it will restart funding for the academic scholarships.

Tickets are $80 for the full lunch followed by the performance, or people with a tighter schedule can opt for dessert and the performance for $25. Tickets are available at operalunch.eventbrite.com or by calling 408-294-6919.

COUNTY CONCERNS: Santa Clara County Executive James Williams will discuss what federal cuts could mean for county programs and services — as well as how the county is responding — at a meeting April 7 that’s being hosted by the South Bay Democratic Coalition. The 7 p.m. meeting will be held at 2901 Moorpark Ave., Suite 110, but you can watch online by emailing rkstoken@sbcglobal.net for information.