Fine Arts Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

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Pete participated in several TX productions during his tenure at St. Xavier in various roles utilizing his visual arts skills to create stage scenes for each production while remaining a good student and a member of the swim team.

Pete further honed his craft at the renowned UC DAAP program and ultimately received his bachelors in fine arts at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with a focus on 3D computer art bolstering his career launch as a 3D artist for video games, TV productions, films, and other media.

Pete sharpened his craft as a 3D modeler in the movie industry between 2007 and 2011 creating award winning art for various films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Tron: Legacy, X-Men: First Class, and others.

Pete was the one of 4 modelers on Brad Pitt’s character in the Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, a film that won the 2009 Academy Award for best visual effects and best art direction. In 2010, Pete was one of two digital sculptors behind Jeff Bridges’ and Oliva Wilde’s digital avatars in Tron: Legacy, a film that was nominated for dozens of awards for the arts and the winner of the Lumiere Award for 3D Creative Arts.

Pete’s true passion is the creation of creatures.  His sketchbooks dating all the way back to the very ones used in his arts electives classes at Saint Xavier are riddled with fictional creatures that inspire and enchant the viewer. From 2011 to the present, Pete has been a creature artist for various video games including Hellgate:London, Crash Planet, and Guild Wars 2. He continues to create monsters and creatures for Arenanet and Guild Wars 2 as well as contributing tools to help streamline the pipeline and allow for new possibilities. 

As if Pete’s 3D art were not enough reason to be in the Hall of Fame, he is also a musician.  Pete has played for various bands and is the drummer for Me, Grimlock!, a newer pop punk band rising from the Seattle punk scene with a promising trajectory that blends fast melodic riffs and 2 part vocal harmonies supported by Pete’s fast and solid drumming foundation.

Pete’s passion for the arts has also compelled him to instruct others both formally and informally.  In 2016, Pete was an instructor at the Art Institute of Portland.  Pete also leads and participates in drawing and painting classes to further hone his art and the art of others.

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Kevin Kern is a versatile performer with a rich background in theater. Kevin started in TX as a freshman on stage crew for the fall show and then auditioned for Brigadoon the spring of his freshman year.  That year he was chosen to do a very intricate dance involving swords, quite an accomplishment for a  freshman to be chosen for such a highlighted role.

From that moment on he was involved in every Theatre Xavier show for the rest of his high school career. As a sophomore he starred as The Leading Player in the musical Pippin.  Again a huge accomplishment for an underclassman.  His junior year he was Jesus in Godspell and his senior year he was the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors.  

Kevin starred as JM Barrie in the National Tour of Finding Neverland.  He performed this role over a hundred times in the Broadway production as a standby for Matthew Morrison, Alfie Boe, and Tony Yazbeck.

Other Broadway credits include Wicked (Fiyero), The Bridges of Madison County (Standby for Robert Kincaid), First Date (Standby), The Wedding Singer (Standby for Robbie Hart), and Les Miserables (Marius).  He has also performed in London where he was a part of the West End production of Hair.  

On the other side of the globe, he has traveled and performed extensively in Asia.  He helped open the Culture Square Theater in Shanghai and has performed concerts in Singapore and Manila.  He helped to develop Singapura, an original musical which opened in 2015 in Singapore to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their independence.  Other travels have taken him to Los Angeles where he was in the Pre-Broadway production of 9 to 5 The Musical and across the country in the National Tour of The Music Of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  He has also performed concerts in Mozambique, Chile, Argentina, and all around the Caribbean.   

Closer to home, he was in the original Off-Broadway productions of Next To Normal at Second Stage Theater, played Woody in Finian's Rainbow at the Irish Repertory Theater, and was a swing in the original company of Altar Boyz, where he performed all five roles.

When he’s not working in New York, Kevin has performed across the country in such venues as The Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, The St. Louis MUNY, Sacramento California Music Circus, The Virginia Opera, and The Signature Theater in Washington D.C. He has also performed at the world famous Carnegie Hall.  

Kevin originally moved to New York City to attend New York University where he earned a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance. He and his wife, Megan Lawrence, have four crazy kids named Gus, Sunny Jo, Nolie, and Clover!

Kevin has been enjoying being a realtor on the Pollock Properties Group of Keller Williams in Northern New Jersey for the past six years. Their team is one of the top real estate teams in the region.

 

Time at St X Bio:

Fall 1988 - Teahouse of the August Moon - Stage Crew

Spring 1989 - Brigadoon - Sword Dancer/Ensemble

Fall 1989 - The Fifth Sun - Ensemble

Spring 1990 - Pippin - The Leading Player

Fall 1990 - The Foreigner - Sgt Froggy LeSueur

Spring 1991 - Little Shop of Horrors - Ensemble

Fall 1991 - We Bombed in New Haven - Capt. Starkey

Spring 1992 - Godspell - Jesus

 

 

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Chris Kiradjieff is the Third/Utility Trumpet player for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. His musical journey started while he was a student at St. Xavier with the Cincinnati Youth Symphony Orchestra and the CCM prep department Brass Choir. He pursued a Bachelor's degree in Trumpet performance at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music before continuing his education with a Master's Degree at The Cleveland Institute of Music, studying under Philip Collins and Michael Sachs.

He started his career with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1996 and has played in venues all across the country, including playing the National Anthem with his wife Amy at a Cincinnati Marlins meet in Keating Auditorium,  and was lucky enough to play alongside his dad in the Cincinnati Symphony for seven years. 

He is very proud of his many career accomplishments but particularly proud of his work with the trumpet section in the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra.

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Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television. She is a 2009 recipient of the Alex Awards. Her works have influenced American playwrights by bringing a feminist edge in her old works.

Theresa’s Theatre Xavier career began as a Starlet in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and also includes her role as Donna Lucia D’Alvadorez in Charley’s Aunt, but she is most remembered for her role as Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible. 

Rebeck was born in Kenwood, Ohio, and graduated from Cincinnati's Ursuline Academy in 1976. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1980,^[4] and followed that with three degrees from Brandeis University: an MA in English 1983, a MFA in Playwriting in 1986, and a PhD in Victorian era melodrama, awarded in 1989.

Past New York productions of her work include Mauritius on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre in a Manhattan Theater Club production; The Scene, The Water's Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage Theatre; Bad Dates and The Butterfly Collection at Playwrights Horizons; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre in 2003. Her play The Understudy, premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the summer of 2008, with a cast including Reg Rogers, Bradley Cooper and Kristen Johnson, and ran in New York at the Roundabout Theatre from October 2009 – January 2010, featuring Julie White, Justin Kirk, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar in the cast. The off-Broadway and regional theatre hit comedy premiered in 2015 at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland. Rebeck was attached as a book writer for the new musical Ever After, based on the Drew Barrymore movie of the same name. Her play, Mauritius, ran at the Pasadena Playhouse in California from March 27 through April 26, 2009.

Her play Seminar played on Broadway starting in October 2011, and starred Alan Rickman. In May 2014 Seminar premiered in San Francisco at San Francisco Playhouse receiving outstanding reviews. Her play Fool premiered at the Alley Theatre, Houston, Texas, in February 2014. The theme of the play Seminar was women empowerment through sexuality and the struggles of what it is to be a female in an industry dominated by men.

Her play Poor Behavior opened Off-Broadway at Primary Stages in August 2014. The play premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in 2011.

In an article in The New York Times in September 2007, she said that her plays were about "betrayal and treason and poor behavior. A lot of poor behavior." Rebeck's other publications include Free Fire Zone, a book of comedic essays about writing and show business. She has written for American Theatre magazine and has had excerpts of her plays published in the Harvard Review. Rebeck's first novel, Three Girls and Their Brother, was published in 2008 by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books.

She has received awards including the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, the Writers Guild of America Award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody Award, all for her work on NYPD Blue. She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award in 2003 for The Bells. Mauritius was originally produced at Boston's Huntington Theatre, where it received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Elliot Norton Award. In 2010, Rebeck was honored with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for an American playwright in mid-career.

In television, Rebeck has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury's Law, Smith, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. Through March 2012 she was one of the executive producers for the NBC musical series Smash, which she created, and which also debuted on February 6, 2012. Her produced feature film screenplays include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent feature Sunday on the Rocks.

Rebeck is Distinguished Professor of Playwriting and holds the Lyndall Finley Wortham Chair in the Performing Arts at the University of Houston.

Rebeck is a board member of The Dramatists Guild and the Lark Play Development Center in New York City, and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University. In 2014 she will join the faculty of the University of Houston School of Theatre and Dance as a distinguished visiting professor of playwriting.

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Dennis O’Brien came to St. Xavier High School after beginning his teaching career at Covington Catholic. He initially taught both art and psychology and eventually became the Fine Arts Department Head. Dennis dedicated more than 40 years of his life to teaching visual arts at St. X, working diligently to solidify the fine arts as required academic courses. Known for his involvement in various school activities, including moderating the yearbook, leading the MOB Squad Canned Food Drive and prefecting the cafeteria daily during lunch, Dennis was admired by students for his caring nature and passion for the arts. Beyond the classroom, he was a community activist, particularly advocating for the beautification of Clifton Heights. 

Dennis passed away on January 31st, 2020, leaving behind a legacy of artistic inspiration and dedication to his students and this institution, and recognized through his induction into the St. Xavier High School Fine Arts Hall of Fame.