When Madison Barton stepped off stage after her lead performance in “Once Upon a Mattress,” she got flowers from her parents and a hug from her director, Clint Klose.
It was the summer before her freshman year of high school and her first time performing on a “big stage.”
Klose asked her, “Have you thought about going into this as a career?”
Barton had always loved acting – ever since she was a second-grader watching her older sister in shows – but the thought had never occurred to her.
“I could actually do this?” Barton remembered asking.
“Yeah,” she recalled his reply. “Why do you think I’m teaching here?”
Barton is about to graduate from the Hartt School, a conservatory in Connecticut. She signed with an agent and is looking for work in New York. She credits a lot of her success to Concord’s supportive theater scene and its backbone, Klose.
“It’s close to impossible to break into this business,” she said. “I’m seeing a lot of people who don’t really have the opportunities that I had growing up… It’s still something that feeds me today and encourages me to continue down this road.”
When curtains close on Concord High School’s spring musical, “Dear Evan Hansen,” it will mark Klose’s final show as the leader of the district’s theater program. He’ll retire at the end of this year.
Over a 35-year career in the city, Klose nurtured drama programs at every level of Concord schools and created a technical high school course that propels students into professional stage work. He has been the engine of public theater education in a city that increasingly sees itself as an arts town. Because of his zeal, his relentless work ethic and his supportive warmth, students, parents and alumni said he’ll be missed – and hard to replace.
For Klose, the work has never been a “job.” It’s all joy.
“I always say, may you be so fortunate to have that same opportunity where you feel like you’re doing what you were meant to do,” he said. “You leave an impact and hopefully an impression on others, and it never, ever feels so cumbersome that you feel like ‘I’ve got to get out of here.'”
To his students, his sense of purpose is contagious.
“He’s probably one of the most passionate people I’ve ever met,” said Sophie Shaw, a 2022 Concord High Grad who also happened to grow up down the street from Klose. She’s now a graduating senior at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, earning a degree in musical theater and dance. “He really believed in me, but he’s also so funny and grounded and down to earth and, just, very kind.”
Current students agreed.
“There’s something about him that makes you want to be as invested in this community as he is,” said Maddie Short, a current Concord senior. “He’s always said, doesn’t matter what you do, you just have to make sure that you’re happy.”
“Theater has brought me myself,” added Holly Keenan, a fellow senior. “He makes everyone belong, makes everyone feel like they belong. I can be completely myself here.”
Klose is as proud of the accomplishments of students who get involved just for fun as he is of those who go on to pursue careers in music and theater.
“We could fill the next four hours going over some of the milestones for kids that had no other opportunities,” he said in an interview. “To watch them shine on stage, and then go back to their class? Where they’ve never been noticed?”
Klose’s direction underlines the transferable soft skills to be learned both on stage and behind the scenes: public speaking, memorization, teamwork and collaboration.
“It’s really helped me be able to talk in front of other people, helped me a lot being able to memorize things,” said Maggie Hall, another senior in the spring show. “I know it kind of sounds silly, but I plan on being a doctor and you need to know steps and procedures. It’s kind of like knowing the steps of a show.”
For students who see theater as their career, Klose has helped chart a path.
“It’s okay to perform, and it’s okay to go out there and make a living at it. No matter what the world is saying to you, someone’s got to do it. So why isn’t it you?”
Clint Klose, to his students
Rachel Revellese, who moved to New York City after getting a fine arts degree in musical theater from Syracuse, calls Klose her “theater dad.”
“He was the first person in my life, and was consistent throughout my schooling, to be like, ‘She needs to be doing this,'” Revellese said. Klose guided and directed her from her time at Beaver Meadow through graduation. “I think I was always meant to do this, but certainly it would have been a much bumpier path to where I am now, if he was never a part of my life.”
Students and parents alike said Klose combined his supportiveness with an expectation of hard work and professionalism. His cast and crew feel the weight of those expectations and are eager to meet them.
Revellese’s mother, Dawn, said their family had considered private school.
“One of the reasons we stayed in Concord School District was because of Clint and the acting program,” she said. “We looked at other places, and we were like, ‘we’re staying in Concord.'”
Pam Wicks’ children have worked with Klose both in and out of school. She volunteers at the high school and CRTC, including as a show photographer.
“I can’t figure out how to describe what makes him so special,” she said of Klose. “It’s just like… it’s in his gooey center to spread this joy of theater and performing with anyone who wants to learn from him.”
Klose first came to Concord in 1991 as a music teacher at Beaver Meadow, recruited by then-principal Roger Brooks.
He found momentum early, starting what’s now called the Student Actors Program, or SAP, a theater group for grades three through five.
What would become a long career in Concord was almost nipped in the bud, as 1992 was a hard budget year. Klose was one of the newest teachers and was reduced to part-time status. He thought he’d have to look for full-time work elsewhere. Instead, a group of parents raised funds to bridge the gap and keep him on full-time. His position was restored in full the following year.
Klose would stay on for 28 years as a music teacher at Beaver Meadow. During that time, he also became the theater director at Rundlett Middle School and, later, Concord High School. For one trying year, 2011, he led shows at all three. From 2012 on, Klose was the director at CHS, passing the baton to after-school drama programs at the two lower schools. He also took the helm of RB Productions, a local theater company originally started by Bow High School grad Ryan Brown.
There’s an uncommon depth and strength to Concord’s support for theater, Shaw said.
“I think Concord theater is quite an amazing thing – the opportunities that were given to us and the thriving community that was built there,” she said. “A lot of it had to do with Clint.”
In 2015, Concord Regional Technical Center, or CRTC, principal Steve Rothenberg came knocking, Klose recalled. Rothenberg wanted to add a theater and production course to the school’s offerings, alongside construction, nursing and other career-oriented trainings. Klose was all in.
For a few years, he taught at both CRTC and Beaver Meadow, but that became unmanageable as the CRTC course ballooned in popularity. With around 50 kids from across the region enrolling, Klose transitioned to CRTC full-time in 2018.
While CRTC’s offering is unique among the state’s tech centers, Klose frames his course – especially the production side, learning the groundwork behind sound, sets and lighting – as no different than any other at the school. It connects a starved labor market with skilled young workers and gives a head start to kids who know what they want to do.
“Especially in theater production, the tech side of things, there are so many jobs that are available,” Klose said. “It’s a need, not just in this state, but in this country. They are just starving for people who want to do this.”
Shaw, as she prepares for her senior showcases, pointed to the CRTC program as key career preparation. She learned both what she wanted to specialize in and a basic grasp on every component of a performance.
“He pushed us to figure out what we wanted to do in the business, but also to be as multifaceted as possible,” Shaw said.
The course also included lessons about finding mentors and networking. Klose brought some of his own connections in the industry, including actors on Broadway, to speak with his students and give workshops.
Wicks’ children have long been involved in theater. But only her youngest son, Evan, is leaning towards a professional track. With his older brother in the cast alongside him, he’ll also take on the titular role in Dear Evan Hansen this spring. Wicks sees the course at CRTC as a game-changer for her son.
Getting the time and depth of a course curriculum, instead of only the fast-paced rehearsal schedule of regular shows, has helped her son to act as a craft, she said.
“My kid doesn’t need to take AP Physics like my other two did, because that’s not his path,” she said. “He needs this class.”
Wicks, a lifelong theater lover, remembers the first Concord musical she saw in person – Godspell. Her boys were young, and they demanded a seat in the front row. While her sons, who had just started doing elementary school shows, were in awe of the beads thrown from the stage into their laps, Wicks was in awe of the performance.
“I did high school theater, and we did good shows, I was proud of what we did, but it was not like this,” she said. “And I was like, my kids are gonna get to do this program.”
Today, Wicks is worried. Klose, as she put it, leaves enormous shoes to fill.
Because of a designation by the state, the acting portion of the CRTC course has been split off and absorbed at Concord High. It’s unlikely to get as strong an enrollment from a smaller pool of students, and Wicks fears budgetary belt-tightening will spell its end.
More broadly, she also knows Klose has a package of expertise that’s hard to replicate. He oversees both the technical and dramatic side of the school theater program with equal sharpness, she said, an uncommon combination of skills at public high schools, where many programs of Concord’s caliber separate those positions.
Some students share this uneasiness about the future of the drama program. Two current seniors said they were relieved to be leaving alongside him.
Klose is taking the plunge into retirement in part because of his family: he’ll become a grandfather in May.
He also felt it was the right time.
“It’s someone else’s turn,” he said. “I came here, and it developed into what I developed it into. And now it’s someone else’s turn to do the same thing.”
