May 30 Vallejo/Vacaville Arts and Entertainment Source: For Vallejo school vice principal, a passion for ‘doing theater’

By day, Faustino Cadiz III works as a vice principal at Wardlaw Elementary in Vallejo. But by weeknights and some afternoons through June 23, he will be one of the denizens of Berlin’s Kit Kat Klub.

By doing so, he will satisfy something deep within his emotional core — his “passion for doing theater.” These days that means as an ensemble member of Center Repertory Company’s 2023-24 season finale, Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret,” at the Lesher for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Adapted by Joe Masteroff from a John van Druten play and Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories,” the 1967 Tony-winning musical, long a Broadway and national touring staple, is a stimulating, intelligent mixture of live music, theater and dance. Its major numbers include, besides the title tune, “Wilkommen,” “Don’t Tell Mama,” “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” “If You Could See Her,” and “I Don’t Care Much” — the latter two sung by the slithery, ringmaster-like Emcee.

It’s all stirred darkly around a theme of a politically misguided society gone horribly wrong in Center REP artistic producer Markus Potter’s staging, with choreography by Jessica Chen, a production with a message for our own politically fraught times.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Cadiz, 33 and a Vallejo native, said during a brief telephone interview Sunday evening.

His excitement may be in part because he is also the understudy for lead character Cliff Bradshaw, a budding American writer who falls for singer Sally Bowles and frequents the club, a 1930s subterranean den of sleaze and sexual ambiguity, a saucy German nightspot amid emergent Nazism and Hitler’s Third Reich in the Weimar Era.

Cadiz’s avocation has its roots in the last Actor Training Program at Solano Community College some 10 years ago, when he decided to “pursue acting on the side.”

Yet, for him, there is a link between his passion and his job at the Oakwood Avenue school, where, he agreed, he keeps a close eye on students and their welfare as they enter the campus.

“Every single day, I get up and go around the kids to make sure we’re starting on a positive note,” said Cadiz, adding he stresses positive, helpful points of view for the young students, telling them, “We’re having a brand new day” or “We can make better decisions.”

“Whatever’s going on, school is supposed to be a safe place to learn” and, his job, he said includes “‘help them to find resources if they need extra support.”

That philosophy “goes along with growing up in Vallejo,” said Cadiz, who earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from San Francisco State University.

“I think what supported me was the performing arts,” he said. “And that was through marching bands and drum lines, but also theater in high school, the drama club.”

So in his early 20s, Cadiz decided to enroll in SCT instructor George Maguire’s class, thinking he would “grow in tandem with wanting to be an educator,” he said.

Following his stint with Maguire, a respected Bay Area actor and teacher, Cadiz, who has studied voice and dance, too, landed lead or supporting roles not only with Solano County troupes — among them Missouri Street Theatre, Fairfield Civic Theatre, and Vallejo Music Theatre — but also with regional Bay Area companies, among them San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company, Contra Costa Civic Theatre and Tri-Valley Repertory.

Asked why he keeps returning for audtions, Cadiz, of Filipino descent, said, “It’s doing it for me. It’s something I can constantly work on for myself, as well as, in some ways, it satisfies the need to accomplish something.”

One notable thing about the Center REP production, he added, is the lighting, “which tells a story.”

He called “Cabaret” a classical musical “still relevant to our own society today.”

His dream role?

Perhaps no surprise, it’s the Emcee in “Cabaret” said Cadiz, adding “I tend to like characters that are different from myself. There are so many ways to play the Emcee.”

IF YOU GO

• What: Center Repertory Company’s “Cabaret,” through June 23
• When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays
• Where: Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
• Tickets: $48 to $73
• Telephone: (925) 943-7469
• Online: lesherartscenter.org
• Special events: Pride Night, June 12; and an ASL interpreted performance, 2:30 p.m. June 15