Just months after graduation, Claire Kwon (Communication ’22) booked her first Broadway show. Following a hasty audition process, she appeared as an offstage swing, covering multiple ensemble parts in a musical adaptation of the 2000 comedy film “Almost Famous” that very fall.
It was a Saturday evening, and Kwon was out to dinner when her manager finally called.
After hearing the news, Kwon rushed home, overcome with emotion.
“I remember I was so crazy and anxious. I was pulling my car out of the spot, and I hit a concrete pole,” she said.
Booking a Broadway gig was the culmination of a lifelong dream for Kwon, who fell in love with theater at the age of nine when she appeared in a youth production of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Olivia Pryor (Communication ’22), a close friend of Kwon’s, happened to be visiting family in New Jersey on a night Kwon appeared in “Almost Famous.”
Pryor said she and her mother had tickets to “A Strange Loop” on Broadway that evening, but seeing Kwon was far more important.
“We ran over to the ‘Almost Famous’ box office, and I was like, ‘My friend’s going on tonight! Do you have any tickets left?’” Pryor said.
Two years after “Almost Famous” concluded, Kwon returned to the Broadway stage as a standby in the critically acclaimed musical “Maybe Happy Ending,” appearing onstage when star Helen J. Shen is out.
“Maybe Happy Ending” chronicles two helper robots in near-future South Korea, who fall in love after years of social isolation. After Claire asks Oliver to borrow his charger, the robots strike up an adversarial friendship.
They eventually travel to Jeju Island in search of Oliver’s former owner, who abandoned him in his apartment. Toward the end of the show, the robots discover their romantic feelings for one another. However, much like their battery life, their love has an expiration date.
The fan-favorite musical garnered critical acclaim and won six Tony Awards last year, including the Tony Award for Best Musical. Following its theatrical success, “Maybe Happy Ending” was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in November.
After over a year as a standby, Kwon will take over the role of helper robot Claire on April 3 for a limited engagement.
Actors Darren Criss and Shen originated the roles of Oliver and Claire in the Broadway production and will take their final bows in the coming months. After Shen leaves in February, Kwon’s fellow standby, Hannah Kevitt, will take over the role for six weeks before Kwon’s engagement begins.
By way of Northwestern
Kwon was working as an assistant house manager at Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts her freshman year when she stumbled upon Head of Acting David Catlin and introduced herself.
“I saw how personable she was, how authentic she was, what a good conversationalist she was,” Catlin said. “I remember that meeting as though it was yesterday because she made that kind of impression.”
Kwon credits much of her professional success to her time at NU and her immersion in the performing arts as a child.
Growing up in Bergen County, New Jersey, a convenient bus ride away from Broadway’s epicenter in Midtown Manhattan, Kwon fell in love with theatre early in life. She recalled commuting to the city to see shows on a regular basis.
“I was very lucky that in high school, when I was going through my obsessive phases, I could scour for very cheap tickets online and then take the bus by myself and go to Midtown,” she said.
Kwon said she was deeply invested in theatre during high school, but was uncertain how far her passion would take her.
Kwon applied to NU on a whim, not thinking she would get in.
“When I was first applying to Northwestern, I didn’t know how perfect it might be. I applied not expecting to get in and also not expecting to be able to afford to go, but then I did, and luck had it that I was able to go, and it kind of was the perfect place,” she said.
In the freshman year theater sequence, students participate in the crew of a Wirtz production to gain hands-on experience with the mechanics of a theatrical show. While working on “A Chorus Line” her freshman year, Kwon met Karina Patel (Communication ’22), who Kwon described as her best friend.
Patel said she was immediately struck by Kwon’s curiosity, a quality that has endured through adulthood.
“She’s someone that’s been on Broadway and will also talk to you about quantum physics for an hour,” Patel said.
Double-majoring in theatre and international studies, Kwon juggled a hefty workload, both academically and artistically.
Still, she quickly acclimated to NU’s performing arts scene, becoming an active member of THUNK, one of NU’s most popular a cappella groups. She also auditioned for THE BIX!, a musical improvisation group, and quickly became friends with Maddie Burton (Communication ’21), the eventual director of the club.
“My first impression of her was, ‘How is this girl able to handle so much so well?’ She was known as the person who was always going to be said ‘Yes’ to because she was just so talented,” Burton said.
Kwon also joined Purple Crayon Players, an organization under the Student Theatre Coalition that presents theatrical productions for young audiences.
Kwon described a formative moment when a mother approached her after a PCP performance to thank her for the organization’s community outreach. The mother told Kwon she was “so pleased by all this work you guys are doing,” despite initial skepticism about NU’s relationship with the Evanston community.
“I thought that was a really beautiful moment, and also a very helpful one,” Kwon said. “It showed a way that we could actually give back to the community that we are in and are often taking from.”
Kwon appeared in multiple other student productions, including Wirtz productions “The Ballad of Mu Lan,” “Fun Home” and “The Wolves,” as well as StuCo’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”
While studying theater, Kwon worked closely with various faculty members who fondly look back on their time teaching her.
Kwon studied under Catlin in a two-year sequence, and he would often ask Kwon for help with scene work.
“I could turn to Claire, and I would say, ‘Could you hum something or sing some kind of creepy song, or something that’s mournful, or something that’s melancholy?’ And she would just instantly intuit what the perfect thing to sing was,” Catlin said.
Theatre Prof. Kelli Morgan McHugh worked with Kwon in private vocal lessons from her sophomore year through graduation.
She describes herself as “Claire’s biggest fan.”
“Immediately when I met Claire, I just knew she was going to go places, not only because she has an incredible voice, but she is an incredible actor and dancer, and she’s super humble about it,” McHugh said.
McHugh said Kwon was a quick learner, adding that she would periodically challenge Kwon to expand her vocal skillset.
Toward the end of her college career, Kwon had an epiphany.
“By my senior year, when I was at NU and trying to find agency managers, I realized that if I didn’t fully commit and go for it 100%, I was always going to regret it,” she said.
Under McHugh, Kwon was selected for the Acting and Musical Theater Showcase, a selective sequence where musical theatre students travel to New York City to produce a performance for an audience of casting directors and talent agents.
Representation is critical for artists breaking into the Broadway industry, and Kwon got signed with a manager soon after the showcase.
‘Maybe Happy Ending’
Having known Kwon as an artist and friend for years, Pryor said Kwon immediately came to mind when she heard “Maybe Happy Ending” was in development.
“I remember when I heard about the show and that it was auditioning, I remember being like ‘Claire Kwon, she’ll be playing that part.’”
However, Kwon’s journey to “Maybe Happy Ending” began with heartbreak.
When she first sent in a self-tape for the show in early 2024, it was met with radio silence. Kwon thought her chances of being cast in the show were slim to none.
Initially, she brushed aside the rejection and shelved it as an unfortunate reality of her chosen industry. However, when she saw “Maybe Happy Ending” early in its Broadway run, she fell in love with the show — and felt devastated that she wasn’t onstage.
“There was a big part of me, actually, that was like, ‘That’s it, I’m leaving this industry. The show is perfect, and I want to be in it, and if I’m not in it, then what am I doing? Maybe I’m not meant for this industry,’” she said.
Little to her knowledge, the casting team had not forgotten about Kwon’s tape.
Nearly a year later, as the production was searching for an additional Claire standby, the casting team revisited her tape. Without asking for any additional materials from her, they knew Kwon had what they were looking for.
“Her tape was so good,” said Justin Scribner, production stage manager at “Maybe Happy Ending.” “What I saw on her tape was that she has a very strong and clear voice, and she has just the right amount of edge for this role.”
Shen echoed Scribner’s message.
As the principal, Shen has a unique outlook on Kwon’s performance.
“(Kwon) has so many colors in her palette,” Shen said. “She’s able to tap into different genres and different styles of singing, and she really wants to learn so much.”
After two months as a standby, Kwon made her Claire debut on March 19. She described the night as “simultaneously surreal and also just like any other day.”
“I felt very present on stage, and I felt like I was prepared enough that I could really just drop in and live the show and be in the moment,” she said. She described positive reception from fans of “Maybe Happy Ending” who showed up to her debut.
Multiple friends Kwon had amassed throughout college traveled to the city to see her first performance in the show.
“It was kind of like a mini reunion. Some of my friends from Northwestern and from high school, who had not seen each other in years, got to reconnect … I’ll be forever grateful,” she added.
Since then, Kwon has performed an additional nine times, according to Scribner.
He said that few other young actors possess the emotional maturity required to play a robot like Claire. Like Oliver, Claire is abandoned by her owners. But unlike him, her former owners granted her the password to unlock all of her memories, including the divorce of her married owners and a drunken advance by the male spouse.
“(Claire) is a robot with her factory settings intact, who, after 13 years of living alone, is kind of broken and kind of rusted over,” Scribner said. “(Kwon’s) got so many incredible muscles that she’s developed over the few years since graduation, and she is so perfect for this role.”
As the only other standby who has played Claire, Kevitt got a front row seat to Kwon’s artistic process.
Having gained insights from one another while understudying the same role, Kevitt said Kwon’s performance highlights her curiosity and hunger for knowledge.
“She is so smart and so well read and such a good critical thinker,” she said. “It really inspires me to see how she uses that in her art, and how she uses that to impact others.”
Stepping into Broadway stardom, Kwon has a vibrant group of friends, former mentors and colleagues passionately cheering her on.
In her opening number, “The Way That It Has to Be,” Claire sings: “When that final moment comes/I’ll say hi, and shake its hand/be polite and let it in.”
Much like Claire, Kwon is well prepared for the journey.
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