After acting and directing on numerous stages in New Jersey and New York, West Windsor native Carol Kehoe is returning to the stage in her hometown. She portrays Adriana, the wife of Antiphous of Ephesus, played by her real-life husband Stephen Kazakoff, in Shakespeare 70’s “The Comedy of Errors” at Kelsey Theater opening Friday, June 30.##M:[more]##
After a run of 36 summers at Washington Crossing Park’s Open Air Theater, the company is moving indoors to Kelsey Theater this summer. Productions are Fridays, June 30 and July 7, at 8 p.m.; Saturdays, July 1 and 8, at 8 p.m.; and Sundays, July 2 and 9, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for seniors, students, and children.
Born in 1959, Kehoe is the third generation in her family to be born and raised in West Windsor. The family lived on Harris Road and she was able to easily walk to Maurice Hawk School (which had just opened). They later moved to North Mill Road.
“I drive by and think of the neighborhood the way it was,” she says. Kehoe remembers a spring by the train station where people would go to fill bottles with water, Bobby Kennedy’s train coming through, the Coward tract, the newly-opened Colonial Park section, ice skating on Grovers Mill Pond, and walking on the old trolley track area (underneath the high tension wires throughout town).
She credits her father, Bob, with her work ethic and love of history. “He read great literature to me as a child including Kipling and Shakespeare,” she says. “It has made acting much easier.” A salesman for companies that designed and manufactured labels for businesses including Kraft Foods and Godiva Chocolate, he retired in January. “He made personal contact with his buyers and talked to them mostly about everyday life — and it worked,” she said. “He worked hard but made it a point to come home every night to be with us.” Her father also served on the West Windsor Planning and Zoning boards in the 1960s and ’70s.
Her mother, Ruth Reed Kehoe, was a physical therapist who worked with severally handicapped children when she began her career. When she tried to go back after her four children were born it was too hard emotionally and she became the tax assessor in West Windsor. She died almost to six years ago.
Her siblings, who still live in West Windsor, include Sharon LaForge, a physical fitness and training instructor; Kristine McCormick, who works at Environ Corporation; and Kevin, formerly a teacher at both WW-P high schools, and football coach at High School North, now works for Merrill Lynch.
Her grandparents met while skating on Grovers Mill Pond. Growing up on North Mill Road, Kehoe skated there almost every morning before going to school.
Kehoe was discovered by Demi Ashton, who recently retired as the drama teacher at the high school. Her first role ever was playing the sister in “Harvey” where she had to wear age makeup and sport gray hair. She was later in “Bye Bye Birdie,” “You Can’t Take it With You,” and “Damn Yankees.” A member of the eighth grade chorus, she was chosen for the part of Julie in “Carousel” — but the show was cancelled before rehearsals even started.
A member of the first class from West Windsor that did not go to Princeton High School, Kehoe graduated from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School in 1977. She attended the Mason Gross School of the Arts in its new drama training program. After receiving her bachelor’s degree she felt it made more sense to continue her studies elsewhere and went to Europe to study theater instead of spending the next three years in the same program.
Kehoe became a member of Actors Equity during her first season with Princeton Rep and for close to 20 years worked enough weeks to keep her health insurance and pension. She has performed at New York theaters such as Playwrights Horizons, the American Place Theater (Women’s Project), and the Ensemble Studio Theater.
“I wanted to do the classics including Shakespeare, Moliere, and Ibsen,” she says. She met her future husband in 1987 when she playing Helena with Princeton Summer Theater’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He was brought in as the fight choreographer. “I didn’t hear from him for six months,” she says.
Kazakoff, a graduate of the MFA program at Mason Gross, missed meeting Kehoe at Mason Gross by six months. He joined Shakespeare ‘70 in 1985 and later introduced Carol to it. For ten years, he ran the Tomato Patch Performing Arts Program at Mercer County College.
He has worked in the gifted and talented program at Howell High School for 20 years. His students have won Emmy Awards, been seen on episodes of L.A. Law, and the school has won Paper Mill Playhouse awards. Kazakoff “writes his own program based on the Meisner method, auditions the students, and teaches discipline and respect for the arts,” she says.
Although the couple has performed together in many productions, some memorable ones have occurred in the more recent past. They were playing the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth when she was pregnant with their son Donovan. Because of the many superstitions about bad things happening to people during productions of “MacBeth,” Kehoe really wanted to do the role but couldn’t help asking herself “is this a bad thing to do for my baby?”
The following year they were both in “Henry IV, Part I” at Open Air Theater. “Donovan never slept and we were exhausted,” she says. “Donovan made his stage debut in that production and he never made a peep onstage.”
Now six, Donovan wants to be on stage. “He loves the theater and seeing us on stage,” she says. “It’s scary that he wants to do this.”
Her advice for people thinking of a career in theater: “if you can do anything else — do it. If you want the money or the fame, it may not happen. Get good training although you have to train on the stage in front of an audience — the other actor. The way you react to an audience is almost spiritual.”
Quoting Shakespeare’s famous line by Prospero to his daughter in “The Tempest,” she says “We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” — Lynn Miller
The Comedy of Errors, Kelsey Theater, Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road, 609-584-9444. www.kelseytheatre.net. Through July 9. $12. Fridays and Saturday, June 30, July 1, 7, and 8, 8 p.m.; Sundays, July 2 and 9, 2 p.m.
