Yorktown Stage alum hits Broadway

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. –For actor Jack Baugh, the journey from Veterans Road to the Great White Way began long before the Texas native set foot on The Yorktown Stage.

Baugh, who recently joined the cast of Broadway's "Book of Mormon" as Elder Price actor Kevin Clay's standby, now calls the local theater a launching pad.

Baugh grew up in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land surrounded by sports and family. He’d never heard of Yorktown, and Broadway felt worlds away.

“I like to consider myself a late bloomer when it came to performing arts,” said Baugh, 23. “I tried my hand at several different sports. I tried football. I didn't like hitting people.”

His family asked him what he wanted to do instead. Baugh had been in the choir throughout middle school, and he recalled his choir teacher giving him a choice: Spanish, band, or choir. He picked Spanish.

The choir teacher said there were no more spots in Spanish. He had to do choir.

“I found out in like eighth grade, she totally lied to me, but she saw potential in me."

It was high school when Baugh really started to get into musicals.

“I just really love No. 1, being the center of attention, and I love the community of it,” he said about musical theater. “I, just, I fell in love with it.”

After a tedious college audition process, Baugh made the move in 2021 to New York to study musical theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. While pursuing his degree, he performed around the city and, quickly after graduating, traveled across the country to perform at regional theaters.

That’s when he found himself at Yorktown Stage. At the theater on Commerce Street, which produces professional musicals, he’s played Bert in “Mary Poppins” (fall 2024) and Troy in “High School Musical” (spring 2023).

Despite the two-hour commute from NYC to Yorktown to rehearse and perform with Yorktown Stage, it all felt worthwhile to Baugh.

“Every single time I arrived there, and I got picked up by one of the cast members, I almost felt like I was back in Texas because everyone was just so kind,” he said about the Yorktown Stage family. “There’s not a bad person there. It didn’t matter how many credits I had on my resume or how much experience I had, because I would still play rock-paper-scissors with Evan, our Michael—it just didn’t matter. And that’s what I love about the community: No. 1, everyone knows everybody, and No. 2, everyone is kind to everyone.”

Back when he booked “High School Musical” in Yorktown, friends would ask him “Where is that?” “What is that?” he recalled. “After I worked there, I was telling everyone, ‘You guys are sleeping on Yorktown Stage.’ I love this place.”

He credits the creative team, August (Augie) Abatecola, Ricky Romano, and Carrie Silvernail and what he called an “amazing” dynamic.

Baugh said other work environments have had “a pecking order, but at Yorktown, it feels like everyone's on the same, like everyone's trying to create this show together, so there's mutual respect."

“We all just expect each other to be professional, but we can have a good time because we're all professional,” he added.

Baugh said when they sold out shows, it was exciting, but it was his first time getting to talk to those in attendance after shows he really felt the Yorktown community.

After wrapping “Mary Poppins” in early December, Baugh had a conversation with his manager and realized he needed a break.

“I did three contracts back-to-back-to-back,” Baugh said. “And so, my body was just wiped out.”

With audition season looming, Baugh took some time to relax and reset. Then, big auditions started rolling in—Fiyero in the “Wicked” (tour), a role in “The Great Gatsby" came across his radar.

“I was getting some crazy stuff,” he said.

When “Book of Mormon" came along, Baugh approached it like any other Broadway audition.

“In our heads, we're taught it takes a long time to get to Broadway,” he explained. “So you just do what you need to do.”

But this show was different—it had been a dream role for years.

“It was the second show I ever saw,” he recalled. “I saw ‘Book of Mormon’ on tour in Houston in 2017 and I was like: ‘I have to be in that show someday.’”

Baugh saw it again in 2022, with his parents, a gift celebrating his graduation from AMDA.

“And I actually saw a lot of the cast members I'm with now, which is really cool,” he said.

The audition process involved five rounds of singing and reading sides (excerpts from the script), culminating in final callbacks. The team behind the show, unfamiliar with Baugh's background, also conducted an extensive reference check.

“They called every single place that I had ever worked," he said. "They called everybody at my college—and they called Augie at Yorktown Stage.”

Baugh said that Augie, without being asked, gave a glowing recommendation during a 20-minute call.

“That just shows you who they are,” Baugh said. “They will always be supportive, and they'll always be there.”

When the offer finally came through, Baugh told his dad—who didn’t believe it until he read the email for himself.

Baugh made his Broadway debut as Elder Price at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on April 1. For his second show the next night, more than 20 members of his Yorktown Stage family were in the audience.

“Of course, they were like, ‘Oh my God, you did it,’” Baugh said. “And I was like: We did it.”

Abatecola, Yorktown Stage’s artistic director, said Baugh now joins an esteemed group of performers who have moved from the Veterans Road theater to some of the most prominent stages across the country.

He called Baugh “a true professional."

"He's always down for just about anything, including doing backflips in a harness fifteen feet in the air,” Abatecola said.

Abatecola added he believes that people “can always tell when a performer truly loves what they do and Jack, most certainly, does.” Baugh, Abatecola said, will always be welcomed home at Yorktown Stage.

Baugh said the Yorktown crew helped him get to the Great White Way.

“I've told Augie 1,000 times, if you think that this means I'm not coming back, you have another think coming,” Baugh said. “I will be coming back to Yorktown... Trust I’ll be back.”