Hannah Kevitt Watched Maybe Happy Ending Come to Life—Now She's at Its Center

Age: 27

Hometown: Hickory, North Carolina

Current role: Hannah Kevitt plays Claire in Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway.

Previous roles: Kevitt made her Broadway debut in the original company of Back to the Future: The Musical, and served as the original Claire standby in Maybe Happy Ending.

Do One Thing That Scares You
Growing up in a small town, Kevitt spent much of her childhood watching classic Disney VHS tapes, as so many of us did. "I made up choreography to them," she says. "I sang along with Snow White and Belle and Mulan and all the girlies." Even at a young age, her parents nurtured this flair for the dramatic, enrolling her in summer camp at the local community theater. "I experienced the worst stage fright ever. I completely froze in the middle of the presentation to the parents and I started crying," she recalls. "I'm just stuck. I can't move, I can't go offstage, and I can't say my line." Understandably, the kindergarten-age Kevitt decided, "That's enough for me." But in first grade, her dad encouraged her to give it another try. "It's something that scares you, and we need to do it again," he wisely suggested. This time, they took to the community theater stage together. The father-daughter duo performed side-by-side in productions including Annie and Seussical—"I played a Wickersham monkey and he played The Grinch. In Annie, I played like Orphan Third to the Left," she laughs. "It was really, really special, and that gave me the confidence to start performing again and realize that I actually do love this."

Wheels Up
She began training after school at a studio, taking every singing, acting and dance class she could. "I was there all the time," she recalls. "Props to my parents, because my mom's an accountant and my dad did theater in college but then majored in history. They were just like, 'She loves it. Let her do it.'" Kevitt points to seeing Lea Salonga's audition clip for Miss Saigon as another pivotal moment. "I was like, 'I want to do that. I want to do that so badly.'" After booking a JCPenney commercial at age 12, Kevitt made a PowerPoint presenting a convincing argument to her parents as to how she could make money doing what she loved. "Thank God for them, they agreed to homeschool me, and I started training more." At 17, she booked her first professional theater job, in an Atlanta production of Miss Saigon. "It was a site-specific, outdoor, immersive production with a real helicopter. It was a crazy experience, but it was awesome. It was one of the first times that I remember being in a community of Asian actors, which was amazing." Afterward, she performed in regional productions of A Chorus Line and South Pacific.

Future Forward
"I started seeing gaps in myself as a person and a performer, so I decided to go to community college in my hometown, and from there to university," Kevitt explains. Pursuing her BFA in Musical Theater from Elon University, she submitted a video audition for Back to the Future: The Musical on Broadway ahead of graduation. After noticing the video hadn't been watched, she sent it directly to casting with a note saying how much she would love to be considered. Her perseverance prevailed, and she was invited to a callback. "I did callbacks for Back to the Future all throughout my senior year, and I found out in March that I was going to be a part of the original Broadway company. I finished my last final, drove my car home, said goodbye to my parents, flew to New York to an empty apartment and started rehearsals." Believe it or not, that was only three years ago.

Things I Learned on Broadway
Kevitt's dedication to her craft and zeal for learning shine through as she relays the next stage of her story. "I will always, always be grateful," she says of the production where she made her Broadway debut. "It was this huge musical with a car and automation and turntables and just the best people ever. I got to be the baby of that cast, and everyone took me under their wing and was like, 'This is how you do Broadway.' I literally have a note in my phone, 'Things I've learned on Broadway,' because I was so eager to figure out how this stuff works and how to do eight shows a week. I was navigating and learning so much so quickly that I was like, 'I have to write this down.'" Premiering a new show comes with its challenges, but also incredible opportunities. From Good Morning America and The View to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, "I got to check off so many of my Broadway bucket list items," Kevitt explains. "So many things that you only get when you open a show on Broadway, I got to do with people that I love and respect. It was the coolest year of my life."

Building Claire
About a year into her run, Kevitt was getting drinks with a friend who asked if she'd heard about Maybe Happy Ending. Original stars Helen J Shen and Darren Criss had already been announced, but Kevitt's friend recommended she ask if the team was looking for covers. "I called my agent and I was like, 'Hey, I've heard of this new show. I would love to get an audition.' I read the entire draft of the script that they had attached and I remember sitting on my couch thinking, 'I have to be a part of this. I don't care if I'm the third tree from the left.' It just felt so magical to me. It felt so special." When she received the offer to be the original standby for Claire after submitting a self-tape audition, she recalls asking, "Are they sure?" With only a couple weeks off between giving her notice at Back to the Future and starting rehearsal for Maybe Happy Ending, her whirlwind Broadway experience continued on its merry way. "Being a part of the original standby company has been the greatest gift, because I got to watch the show being built," she notes. "I got to watch true geniuses and people who are experts at their craft do what they do best." During tech rehearsals, she and original standbys Christopher Tamayo, Steven Huynh and Daniel May sat in the mezzanine of the Belasco Theatre. "Getting to watch it from an audience perspective was so, so cool. I feel like I got the best seat in the house. And then—it's like a video game—I watched it being built, and then I got to be put in it."

Helperbots, Assemble!
The first time she went on in the principal role, Kevitt was understandably nervous. "I never thought I was going to lead a Broadway show," she admits. "The show is so much of Claire and Oliver and their journey, and they basically don't leave the stage at all. But our stage management and creative team are so amazing at what they do. I had understudy rehearsal a lot, and I felt really prepared and really held by the whole building. And then I blacked out," she laughs. "I don't remember it." Kevitt speaks extremely highly of her now friend and predecessor: "I am obsessed with Helen J Shen. I think she's amazing." She was initially nervous to meet Shen, hoping they'd get along as the only two women in the production at the time. "She's turned out to be one of my best friends. There's just this camaraderie in playing a role on Broadway. You get the hard parts of it that don't look hard from the audience. And we've had this with Claire Kwon too, who just finished her six-and-a-half-week run and is going on tour. There's this sisterhood. I love that part about theater, that it's so collaborative." Performing alongside Criss ahead of his departure was another amazing experience for Kevitt. "He was like, 'Hey, I got you. It's just the two of us.' And I could tell in his eyes that he was like, 'It's going to be okay.' There were little moments where he would sneak me a wink, because I guess I looked nervous," she reveals.

How to Be Not Alone
Speaking to why she (and audiences!) love Maybe Happy Ending, Kevitt says, "It is so simple, but it's also magical. It's all of those really universal things, like the first time you kiss someone, the first time you see a firefly, the first time you go on a road trip with someone you don't know." Beyond that, "I feel really excited by the fact that the original company on Broadway celebrated Asian excellence," she says. "I love seeing people who look like me at the stage door. It is really, really, really special to me, because the reason I thought I could do this was because I saw a clip of Lea Salonga. I feel grateful that I get to be that for people now." In preparing to step into the role of Claire full time, "I've been thinking a lot about why I do what I do," Kevitt continues, "because I've just been exploding with gratitude, to be honest. And I feel like the crux of it is community and storytelling. Claire is a character that I did not know was going to be a dream role, because it wasn't written [yet]. I feel really grateful that I get to work on something that has become my dream role, and it's become a lot of people's dream roles. I feel the weight and responsibility, because I want to do justice to the story and to the character—and to those people who want to do it one day."

Where You Belong
Knowing what she knows now, what would Kevitt tell that kindergartener frozen on stage? She gets a little teary before saying, "You are capable of so many things that you don't even know, and you won't know until you're ready to do them. You are more resilient than you think you are, and you are surrounded by people that love you and that you love. Just keep going, keep your heart open. You are about to experience a life that you have never dreamed of. Just be exactly where your feet are, because that is where gratitude lives, and that is where you can find joy and a sense of belonging. Stay grounded and find the things that ground you. I would tell her, 'You're not going to believe your life, dude. You're going to be sitting in this studio at Broadway.com talking about how your life is so crazy.'" Who says endings must be sad?

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