FROM Performing in musical theatre productions in Baker and Empie Theatres TO A principal role on Broadway in Moulin Rouge! The Musical
By Meghan Kita
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For more than a decade after graduating, Gabe Martínez ’10, a theatre major and music minor at Muhlenberg, built a career around performing on cruise ships and at weddings. As live theatre was starting to come back after the initial pandemic disruption, he got a message from his friend Mike Miller ’09, who was working in casting for the Broadway National Tour of Moulin Rouge! The Musical.
“He said, ‘This tour is going out and there’s a role [Santiago] that I think is really good for you,’ so I submitted for it,” says Martínez, who originated the role for the tour in March 2022 and joined the Broadway cast in October 2023. “I never would’ve known about it if not for my good friend from school. It’s just another way Muhlenberg continues to enrich and inform my life and my career.”
Martínez, the child of two performers, fell in love with musical theatre when his parents took him to see Anything Goes at a local high school at age 3 — he cried at intermission because he thought it was over. But Muhlenberg is where he experienced what a career in musical theatre would entail. In 2008, he performed in two summer mainstage productions: He had a featured ensemble role in The Who’s Tommy and was one of the five actors in the children’s production, A Year with Frog and Toad.
“I was doing the children’s show in the morning and Tommy in the evening. They were both very demanding shows,” says Martínez, who had never been in a show that lasted more than a couple weeks. “I remember looking at that schedule and being like … This will be a whole summer of doing this all the time. Seeing that I was able to physically and emotionally get out there and do the same thing every night for a different crowd and have it feel fresh and not get sick of it and really just love what I was doing, every second of it, that was the moment [I knew I could do this professionally].”
Listen to a more extensive interview on the alumni podcast 2400 Chew.
He’s now been doing Moulin Rouge for two years, with only four days off between his last show on tour and when Broadway rehearsals began. He’s now in eight performances of the show each week. While the nonstop schedule has taken a toll on him physically — he’s a frequent visitor to the show’s in-house physical therapist — the Broadway experience has yet to lose its luster, and he suspects it never will.
“I feel so lucky that Muhlenberg really took the time to shape who we were as people and get us ready, mentally and spiritually, for a career in this industry. You’ve really got to have some serious resilience to hang around in this industry long enough to find success,” he says. “As much as I would just stay and do this role for the rest of my career, I know there’s other stuff to do, and now I have a foot in the door … I’m really excited about what comes next, as well.”
“I feel so lucky that Muhlenberg really took the time to shape who we were as people and get us ready, mentally and spiritually, for a career in this industry.”
—Gabe Martínez ’10
Gabe Martínez ’10 during the curtain call for his first Broadway performance of Moulin Rouge! The Musical last fall. Photo by Avery Brunkus ’17
First- and second-grade students at Allentown’s Muhlenberg Elementary School participate in 45-minute classes during the school day taught by Muhlenberg College students interested in dance education.
