Cast members of Our City backstage before a performance at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica: (from left) Andrea Harrison, Jesse Rodriguez, Genesis West, Adeola Salau, Reynaldo Piniella, and Brandi Webb.

Youth Onstage! has just closed an incredible Fall Season!  Our first-ever touring production, Our City, was performed seven times between October and December throughout Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.  YO!’s intrepid band of thirteen young actors started rehearsing the play way back in June at the All Stars center on 42nd Street—and they’ve been through a lot since then!  Each actor played at least three characters, sometimes more, many of whom were of different races, genders, and ages than the performers themselves.  The cast got to know the whole play inside out and learned to work especially well as an ensemble so that they were able to take on a different set of roles each time the show was performed.

Once the tour started, the cast and crew often woke up before dawn to travel into Manhattan, where they met up with directors Dan Friedman and Brian Mullin at 6:30 am, loaded up a van with costumes and set pieces, and traveled out to the boroughs.  Upon arriving at an unfamiliar venue, they often had little more than an hour to set up and prepare before performing for audiences of 400 or 500 high school students.  The cast had to perform as leaders among their peers, working to build a respectful, supportive dynamic with the audience.  After the play, they answered questions and told audience members how they, too, could get involved in Youth Onstage!

Our City was shown at five different public high schools and one college. The tour ended with a grand finale on December 14 at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.  Over 1,600 people saw the show and it had quite an impact on those who did.  One young audience member from Roosevelt High School in the Bronx, in a letter written to the cast said, “I like the fact that you guys really went deep into what society is today.  Everything was so real.”  None of this could have happened without the hard work of YO!’s young actors, who developed not only as versatile performers, but as builders of the program itself.  We’re looking forward to another great season in 2008, on which YO! Will be developing a completely new play about sexism and gender roles that will be taken on tour in the Spring.

For more information about Youth Onstage!, contact Program Manager Brian Mullin at 212-356-8452 or bmullin@allstars.org.