By Laurie O’Brien
If you’re at all familiar with the Olympia theater scene, chances are you’ve heard of Jason Haws. Not only is he a regular on the stage at the State Theater with Harlequin Productions, he has also been featured multiple times in Olympia School District productions, and he directs the Creative Theater Experience (CTE) Summer Showcase Workshops for local middle and high school students.
With a degree in Humanities from The Evergreen State College and a Masters in Education through City University, Haws makes his living as an English and Social Studies teacher at Marshall Middle School on Olympia’s west side. But tromping on the stage, it seems, has always been his passion. It’s hard to imagine how he balances it all.
“I got the bug when I was little. I was always a bit of a performer – the kind of kid who was so obsessed with super heroes that I wore costumes to preschool and wouldn’t take off my Mighty Mouse outfit,” Haws laughs. ” When I was in kindergarten, my mom enrolled me in a Saturday children’s drama workshop.” That program, run by the head of the theater department at Colorado College, provided the outlet he needed. By the time he was in first grade, “Mrs. McMillan” started casting him when she needed a child actor for her college shows. “I did three years – first, second, and third grade – where I was in a college production. That’s when it hit.”
As a young child at The Colorado Springs School and later at the Oregon Episcopal School, where he finished high school, he found his niche in student productions and performed in just about every play or musical his schools mounted. He continued performing as an undergraduate at TESC. “My second year was an introduction to music and theater program, and we concluded the year with a huge production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. It’s a five act play, and we had a different person directing each act. I was one of the directors, and I had one of the main roles. That was fun!” He took part in other student and community productions while at TESC, “But after that I stopped doing theater for seven or eight years.”
As with most people who enjoy stage work, Haws gave up his passion for “real life.” After graduating from college, he moved back to Colorado and started working in day care and after school Y programs. Coming from a large blended family, he found working with children was a natural path.
When he and his future wife, moved back to the Olympia area, he continued running after school programs for the Y. He was directing the program at McLane Elementary School when the school principal encouraged him to get his teaching credentials. “I had been out of drama long enough that I felt like that was something I did,” says Haws, emphasizing the past tense. “When I moved back out here, a friend of mine who I’d done theater with at Evergreen had started working with Harlequin and said ‘You need to get back into it.’ I was like ‘Uh, I don’t know…'” Instead, Haws “went and got my Masters in teaching through City University and (that) kind of consumed me.”
It was while doing his student teaching at McLane that Haws finally felt the pull of the stage again. His friend invited him to participate in a reading of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral at the State Theater. He did the reading and then auditioned for the OSD production of Guys and Dolls. He won the role of Harry the Horse. “That was the moment, when I was playing Harry, when I was back on stage. I was like ‘Oh, whoa! I need to do this.'”
After that he took part in a fully staged production of Murder in the Cathedral . It was during rehearsals for that play that he drew the attention of Harlequin’s Artistic Directors Scot and Linda Whitney. Scot Whitney asked if he’d like to be in The Tempest, “…and it just kind of steamrolled from there.” That was in 2000. Since then he has participated in over 20 shows at Harlequin and counts among his favorites roles the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show, Brendan the barkeeper in The Weir, Archie Stern in Unexpected Tenderness, Bottom in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and John Merrick in The Elephant Man. “Merrick tops the list,” says Haws. “That was just a dream role.”
Because he’s a known entity, he no longer has to go through general auditions every summer. He is given the opportunity to read for any show he’s interested in, and the Whitneys know him well enough that occasionally a part is just dropped in his lap. Such was the case with the lead in The Elephant Man. “I’m really good friends with Scot and Linda now. They trust me. They know I can do a lot of different things. They’ll tell me straight up ‘I don’t think this is the show for you’ or ‘I think this is the show for you.’ We usually start talking a year ahead of time. I’ll say ‘What’s on the schedule next year? Is there anything good for me?”
Away from Harlequin, Haws took on lead roles with the OSD Players in their annual musical production for many years. He loves playing over the top roles like Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, and he’d love to participate in another OSD production, but “Right now it’s about timing.” He has a wife, Liz Packard, and two young daughters, Emma and Tess. He teaches full time, both during the school year and during the summer, and it’s a touch balancing act. He and his wife agreed after the birth of two year old Tess that two shows a year was the right amount. “The opportunities have presented themselves at Harlequin, and so I take those.”
He’s considered going pro, acting full time, and has toyed with the idea of auditioning for The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “That’s something that’s in the back of my mind,” he admits. “It would be a dream.” But he also knows that you have to be careful what you wish for. “I’m in a nice space right now. I’ve found that balance between school and family and theater. I get to play great roles and work with great people.” He continues, “I’ve talked to people that have had that, and then they’ve gone down to OSF and worked there for six years and it’s like that avocation becomes your vocation and that passion changes.”
For now, he’d like to keep his passion, to maintain that happy balance. And Olympia audiences are glad he’s found it here.
Jason Haws can be seen on the stage in Harlequin’s upcoming production of Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, January 26th through February 18th, 2012.
http://harlequinproductions.org/seasonpages/12/the_seafarer.html
