Howard Kaye:
"The theater chose me."
A Cincinnati actor
finds that age
has its privileges.
Growing Role
oward Kaye gets a
personal bonus as
he plays All Hakim
in the Birmingham
Theatre's produc-
tion of Oklahoma!
With his family liv-
ing in Cincinnati
and Passover start-
ing Monday night,
he can use his day
off to drive home
and celebrate the
holiday.
SUZANNE CHESSLER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Mr. Kaye also
appreciates the proximity
of his parents, brother
and sister because it's
easy for them to take the
four-hour drive to be part
of his audience. Midwest
relatives and friends saw
him in two recent Bir-
mingham productions,
The Wizard of Oz and
Annie Get Your Gun.
"I don't think of Ali
Hakim as being at all like
me, which is probably
why I enjoy playing him,"
said Mr. Kaye, who began
studying performing arts
in junior high school.
"He's the comic relief, a
peddler claiming to be
from Persia. He's involved
with a love interest, and
the last thing he wants is
to be married. He wants
to travel and be by him-
self."
For this production,
which marks the 50th
anniversary of the open-
ing of the musical, Mr.
Kaye is reviving a song
deleted from the movie —
"It's a Scandal, It's an
Outrage."
This song also is omit-
ted from stage versions
when the character is
played by a non-singer.
"It's a wonderful role
that I've
been looking
to play for a
while so I'm
I
excited about
having the
chance to do
that," said
Mr. Kaye as
he takes on"',0,Aa
his first Rodgers and
Hammerstein musical.
"Making the character my
own is what it's about
anyway."
Mr. Kaye brings a
strong academic back-
ground in theater arts to
owar
his performances. When
he was in the sixth grade,
he entered Cincinnati's
School for Creative and
Performing Arts. A
teacher recommended
him based on his singing
with the All-City Boys
Choir.
His studies continued
at the University of
Cincinnati, where he con-
centrated in musical the-
ater, and the Juilliard
Theater Center in New
York, where the program
was non-musical. Both
offered four-year curricu-
lums and were taught
from an ensemble point of
view.
During his time at
Juilliard, he worked with
the same 16 people,
including Gayle Cohen,
who is from Michigan.
Her parents, Florence and
Sidney Cohen, are two
people Mr. Kaye looks for-
ward to visiting during
his stay here.
"I think the theater
chose me," said Mr. Kaye,
who also was active in
Jewish Community Cen-
ter productions in his
hometown. "I didn't con-
sciously make the deci-
sion to pur-
sue it.
"Even
though I was
in junior high
school and
high school, I
always was a
part of a real
theater pro-
gram. I never had to go
through the dilemma of
having to choose a career.
I always knew what I
wanted to do because I'd
always been doing it."
His professional debut
acre
ht age for
kla
GROWING ROLE page 86