PAPER MILL - Playhouse at 86

Mark Hoebee - BRINGS CHORUS KID ENERGY TO NEW JERSEY'S THEATER GEM

- MANUEL IGREJAS

Samantha Pauly, Noah J. Ricketts and the cast of "The Great Gatsby" at Paper Mill Playhouse.

In its 86th season, Paper Mill Playhouse is as vibrant and full of promise as a chorus kid's stage debut, which is how producing artistic director, Mark S. Hoebee, started in show business. He still exudes that chorus kid energy. The Freehold native excelled in gymnastics with an eye toward the Olympics until he was sidelined by a torn meniscus A friend asked him if he wanted to come along on a school trip to see "A Chorus Line" on Broadway. "What's it about? 'She said, it's about dancers and their lives off stage.' I thought, oh, my God, that sounds so boring. But I went and I was forever changed. I saw the original company from the back row of the balcony at the Shubert Theatre," he said. "I thought they were telling my life story up there, and it was a life I hadn't even lived yet. and on the bus on the way home I said, 'that's what I'm going to do.'"

He is still in touch with some of that original Chorus Line cast including New Jersey residents Priscilla Lopez and Kelly Bishop (who are besties) and come to most Paper Mill openings. Hoebee went on to Northwestern University, came back to New York and made his Broadway debut in "Jerome Robbins Broadway." Then spent years touring with shows on the road. He was in the Washington, D.C., company of "Sweet Charity" with Donna McKechnie on the night its director, Bob Fosse, died. Having achieved his dream as a performer, he began directing productions.

Hoebee and his spouse, Larry Elardo, moved to New Jersey, because they wanted children. They have two, Stephen and Ashley, he's in business and she's in college. "She told me that she wanted a career where she could make a lot of money. And I told her, yeah, and buy a big house with a nice, finished basement for your dad to live in when he retires."