Kevin Rodd is not your average high school physics teacher. Beginning August 3, the twenty-three-year Pelham resident will take the stage in the White Plains Performing Arts Center’s production of the musical “Cabaret.”

“Just being on a stage is amazing,” said Rodd, who just recently returned to theater. “Your eyes light up, and you feel emboldened.”

“It’s so fulfilling, and we all do it for the love of the theater,” he said. “I want to keep it as a part of my life, and never let it go.”

Though this is Rodd’s debut in a production of this size—the performing arts center’s theater holds 410 people and is regarded as one of the premier stages in Westchester—theater has been an ever-present foundation of his life. While teaching science at St. Raymond High School for Boys in the southeast Bronx, Rodd founded a theater program that thrived during his 12-year tenure at the school.

“When I went to teach at St. Raymond, they had no theater program,” Rodd said. “It was a big basketball school. It’s not a place where they found fostering the arts very important, but I find it really important.”

After establishing the program, Rodd successfully directed 11 musicals with no budget, gathered a great deal of support and even developed actors who went on to professional work. “It was great, and they never would have had that opportunity,” he said.

Unfortunately for St. Raymond, the theater program was discontinued after Rodd left the school.

Rodd also sings and acts in the Glenn Mohr Chorale, a chorale group that has been composing, producing and performing religious music and plays for almost thirty years.

Rodd’s theatrical achievements continue to grow as his performing career reaches new heights with “Cabaret.” Rodd drives the plot of the play as villain Ernst Ludwig, a member of the Nazi Party in 1931 Germany.

The Stage 2 production runs August 3 to 5 and August 10 to 12 at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sundays. Tickets start at $27 and are available for purchase here.