Young Americans, Part 1

For the better part of the past decade I've been a member of a California-based performing arts organization known as The Young Americans. As I prepare to once-again enter the "real world" I thought a retrospective would be interesting. For obvious reasons, this will be a serialized, although I'll try to avoid it becoming too terribly episodic. These are my memories, my feelings, my impressions- for better or worse, and I won't attempt to sugar-coat anything. Having said that, this may still read like a ringing endorsement for all things YA at times. I love the Young Americans, and I hope to someday find a way to give back a fraction of what I've received. (Also, I'm still vain enough to believe they could use my input in a couple places.) Here we go.

**

Nine years ago, on a whim, I went to watch a show. My mom had opened up our house to two young ladies, Benny and Autumn, who were doing something with kids and music. It all sounded very nebulous and unorganized. As a thank-you, my mom got two tickets to see the show. It just so happened that my dad was working late that night, and so mom asked if I wanted to go. No, I didn't. Please, mom asked, I don't want to have to sit by myself. I capitulated, partially because I really had nothing else to do but mostly because those girls were cute, and I reasoned that there might be more of them at the show.

My memories of the first act are more than likely an amalgam of what little I actually remember and everything I've learned in the intervening near-decade since, but some moments that still stick out are the sound of the first three guys (their opener was Trashin' the Camp,) how clean-cut and classy the tap outfits looked (red sweaters and black ties for the guys, red flapper dresses for the girls- my opinion on that would be heavily amended later,) the guy with the glasses (Sam Eames) making the stand-up Bass come alive, and especially the encore, where the cast, dressed in all white, sang America the Beautiful a cappella in a line in front of the stage, (this was maybe two months after 9/11 and it really hit home.)

The second act was full of students from the school district where my mom teaches. This was going to be a disaster. I knew about these kids. This was the ghetto, these were bad kids. I had graduated from the wealthier, whiter high school just up the road. I had grown up learning to make fun of these kids. There was no way this was going to top what we had just seen. Not fair, I thought. They should've let the kids go first. This is going to be such a disappointment. Then Chip came out.

I would later have the opportunity to tour with Chip as Stage Manager on my very first National tour, and he is actually the first Young American I stayed with in a host family situation (known henceforth as "homestay," a word that is so embedded in my personal lexicon I was genuinely puzzled that spell-check had a problem with it.) Chip divided up the audience into four sections, and wordlessly assigned each section an elongated alluvial utterance. Ours was "Eeeeee." The joke became apparent when the final quarter was given "Ting-Tang." As I watched Chip conduct each bracketed chorus in the appropriate order, various members of the audience began to chuckle to themselves as they understood what was going on. A lady in the front row had figured it out and Chip handed her a microphone. We all went through the motions one more time and, on cue, she chimed in with "Walla Walla Bing-Bang." Our nice, ordered world suddenly became a cacophony of strobing lights, techno-bass, and dancing children. Holy shit.

Again, my memory is colored by the fact that I toured with a version of this same show not eighteen months later, but there are still some high points that stick in my memory. Adam (a cast member) had a bit with Merrilee (the conductor) that showcased the entire YA/Director relationship in under two seconds. The Pantomime Tennis bit. Oh my god, Tennis. Again, having toured with "Imagination," "Happiness," and every hideous amalgam in between, it's difficult to reconcile that this was my favorite part of the show. Strangely this almost certainly was the first time I witnessed the Young American version of The Lion King, but the number left absolutely no impression on me at that time.

At the show's conclusion, I sought out the director, and told her how much I enjoyed the show. I was in college at the time, and had literally just done Oedipus, Julius Caesar, and The Crucible all in a row at school, and was in the middle of a month-long intensive dissection of Our Town. I don't know if there is medical documentation detailing the human capacity for dramatic tragedy but I'm sure I was well beyond that theoretical limit. I let her know, in no uncertain terms, that what I just saw represented a beautiful, entirely unfamiliar aspect of the human condition, and that I wished college theater were more like that. It should be noted here that I had no intention of auditioning at this point, I was simply hoping she would pass my sincerest compliments onto the cast.

In the lobby I found my mom talking to the high school choir director, who asked me if I was planning on auditioning. No, I wasn't. Was I sure? Again, no. How would I even go about auditioning? Down the hall, turn left, left again, the door's on your right. Ok, I figured, why not. I was an actor, not a singer, but I was taking a musical theater class (where we were inexplicably studying Sweeney Todd, another contributor to my tragedy overload,) and another audition experience couldn't hurt, right? I walked in, and I recognized the guy with the glasses and the director lady. They asked me to sing something. I sang something. We talked, I wrote my name and address down and that was pretty much it. I left firmly convinced that after my singing, the rest of the audition process was deemed wholly unnecessary, and the conversation was simply a formality so that I didn't feel too bad about the entire ordeal. Oh well. Monday, I went back to school and Young Americans faded into obscure memory.

The letter came in late spring, and for whatever reason I was unsettled by its arrival. Rejection isn't any easier to stomach in the privacy of your own house. I didn't need mine delivered on letterhead. The thickness of the packet should've been a clue, but at the time I simply thought to myself "how many pages does it take these people to say no thank you?" I read the whole thing twice, just to make sure there wasn't some mistake. Uhh... Mom, Dad? I think I'm moving to California.

Continue to Part 2