Eleven years ago, Maggie Kuntz stepped into Cor Jesu Academy. She was a freshman with a handful of voice and dance lessons under her belt, but she had yet to dazzle the fine arts department at her new high school. But she did so, and she did it quickly. 

“I remember watching her dance audition and thinking, ‘Holy cow,’” Kathleen Pottinger, dean of student life at Cor Jesu Academy, said. Pottinger served as the choir director while Kuntz was in high school. “She was amazing. Absolutely amazing. I walked away, like, ‘She’s a freshman?’” 

Now, Kuntz appears on Broadway in “John Proctor Is the Villain” — a critically-acclaimed play directed by Danya Taymor, starring Sadie Sink. “John Proctor” has been nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Play and Best Actress in a Play, and New York Magazine calls it “Perfect! The best play of the season.” 

Set in 2018, shortly after the #MeToo movement, five teenage girls in their rural Georgia high school read “The Crucible” in English class, taking issue with the characterization of John Proctor as “one of the great heroes of American theatre.” As the New York Times puts it, the play is about many things: feminism, youth, pop music, optimism and fury. 

Kuntz plays Ivy Watkins, a teenage girl who struggles between her social ideals and loyalty to her family throughout the play. 

This is Kuntz’ second Broadway appearance. She previously performed as an understudy for the parts of Cherry Valance and Marcia in “The Outsiders” — also directed by Danya Taymor.

“It really has gotten me back in touch with my high school self,” Kuntz said about playing Ivy Watkins. “It’s been wonderful to go back and meet that version of me through this play.”

As a teenager, before Broadway knew her name, Kuntz stole the spotlight at Cor Jesu Academy. During her freshman year of high school, she played one of Reno’s Angels in “Anything Goes” — singing and dancing as backup to the show’s leading lady, Reno Sweeney. 

According to Pottinger, after Kuntz’s freshman year, the Cor Jesu fine arts department couldn’t justify keeping her in supporting roles. The next year, Kuntz played the villainous Ursula in “The Little Mermaid,” and in her junior year, she played the lyrical Georgia Hendricks in “Curtains.” To round out her high school theatre career, Kuntz starred as Dolly in “Hello, Dolly.”

Kuntz was a standout from the very start, per Pottinger. In addition to her being a “triple threat,” her “phenomenal” ear for music propelled her above and beyond the typical skill level. In addition to Cor Jesu theatre, Kuntz was involved with the Muny Teens performance troupe, and she won Best Actress at the St. Louis High School Musical Theatre Awards both her junior and senior year. 

Pottinger says Kuntz had all the talent and training to give rise to a diva, but instead, she was “a kind girl and a delight to teach.” As an upperclassman, she regularly talked with the freshmen and encouraged the whole cast; she was “impeccably prepared” for each role, each practice and could take direction at a moment’s notice.

“She is the most humble and kind,” Pottinger said about Kuntz. “She always wanted to be part of the team.”

After high school, Kuntz pursued her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre at the University of Michigan, where she graduated in 2022. She has since graced The Muny stage time and time again — notably, as an understudy for Mary Poppins in 2022 — and later took a leading role as Carole King in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” at The Rev Theatre Co. in Auburn, New York. 

“John Proctor” has been playing on Broadway for just over a month, where Kuntz is currently performing in eight shows a week. She remarks that it sometimes “feels very high school theatre,” because they circle up before every show, put their hands in and set their intention for a good performance.

In some ways, the five teenage girls in “John Proctor” remind her of who she was in high school, as a student walking the halls of Cor Jesu. Kuntz says she’s rediscovered a sense of joy and raw emotion; she admires the ability of these young characters to speak their minds, saying her high school self was “afraid to rock the boat.”

“I’m definitely able to pull from my life experiences, working on this play in particular,” Kuntz said. “It was really quite special, the bonds I was able to make with some of those students at Cor Jesu — the sort of sisterhood we were able to form at that time. It’s rewarding to work on this play, where all these girls are one.”

“John Proctor” will go head-to-head with the best of the best at the 78th Tony Awards on June 8. With seven nominations, the production is tied with “The Hills of California” for most nominations for a play this season. Kuntz, along with the rest of the nine-person cast, will be in attendance.

Kuntz thanks the teachers at Cor Jesu for their encouragement, for the well-rounded education and for shaping her into the person she is today. 

“I am so grateful for that support in what I was doing, even if it was a less conventional path,” Kuntz said. “I’m grateful people took me seriously, even at such a young age. Teenagers take themselves very seriously, so to have people who believed in me really meant a lot. It fortified me in my pursuit of what I was doing.”