Young Columbians to regroup as part of main event at Celebrate Merriweather

The Baltimore Sun

It has been 30 years since the original Young Columbians performed their musical salute to America on stages across the country, but alumni who are planning to revive the show this weekend at Merriweather Post Pavilion believe it will all come back to them.

"E-mails are flying around about it being a little scary," said Ric Ryder, a New York actor and one of the returning members. "The thing I know from experience is there is a muscle memory that lasts forever."

He said the bonds between the performers will surely return, as well.

"I don't envy the people that are going to be running this rehearsal," Ryder said. "We are going to see each other for the first time in 30 years. It'll be chatty, I'll tell you that."

The Young Columbians' show by much of its original cast will be part of the main stage entertainment at Celebrate Merriweather, a free family event Sunday sponsored by General Growth Properties Inc.

The event is the finale of 40 days of activities celebrating Columbia's 40th birthday. It will include a health fair sponsored by Howard County General Hospital, music and entertainment, and it will conclude with a free concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

General Growth "sought to make a significant contribution to the birthday and to really give a gift to the city of Columbia," said Barbara A. Nicklas, a General Growth vice president and chairwoman of the 40-Day Event Committee.

Nicklas said several people told her they missed being able to hang out on the grounds of Merriweather, and "it got us thinking, we own this [pavilion]. ... We are celebrating all the places of Columbia, and this is a major place."

Nicklas said the Young Columbians are also important to Columbia. They got their start at Merriweather in 1975.

That summer, James W. Rouse asked Toby Orenstein to put together a youth performance about American history to complement an Irish-American festival that featured the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Orenstein said she realized "America's contribution to the arts has been its musical theater," so she decided to trace American history through song and dance.

She worked with Patty Hammer, then a 19-year-old pianist from Silver Spring, to write a collection of medleys and dance numbers for 18 young performers.

It was intended as a onetime event, but it was such a hit that it turned into a steady -- eventually paid -- touring group that was requested for Bicentennial events across the country.

"I think the magic of the show was not only ... this incredible gathering of talent, it was the vehicle itself, which was very unique," said Hammer, now a professional pianist and a music teacher at Atholton Elementary School. "Just to have the songs was so moving, to have history told in a 35-minute format."

Hammer arranged all the songs and, for a while, played every show because she did not want to go through the tedium of writing out the score.

"We had no idea it would last so long," she said. "As many of us are in our early 50s and late 40s, we appreciate it more. Never, and I mean never, have I worked with a more talented, fun group of people than the Young Columbians."

Through the late 1970s, the group took on new members so people could balance their school, home and touring schedules. The leaders wrote salutes to Broadway and Hollywood to expand the repertoire and formed a junior company. For a couple of summers, the group performed at Wolf Trap and at a theater in Virginia, sometimes working three and four nights a week.

"They became so much a part of the community," said Orenstein, who founded Toby's Dinner Theatre and the Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts. "There wasn't a Columbia birthday or a Howard County affair where the Young Columbians weren't there."

Since the early 1980s, the Young Columbians have scaled back and been reinvented several times. Today, a new batch of teenagers is performing an updated show at events around the region.

Early members, who performed at the Kennedy Center, the White House and Disney World in addition to more local gigs, say it was an exciting and formative experience.

Ryder, a 1979 Centennial High School graduate, went on to earn a degree in classical music at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and then perform on Broadway and in touring musicals.

He said the early professional experience "had a huge, huge impact on me. ... The Young Columbians molded me as a professional actor."

Flexibility was a key lesson, said Cheri Butcher Hester, a Wilde Lake High School graduate and original Young Columbian. With different cast members available for each show and new stages every time, "We were just thrown into these situations where we had to 'cover internally,' " she said, recalling a favorite phrase of Orenstein's.

"It was such an incredible experience for us to learn things quickly, to work as a group," said Hester, a professional actress who has worked on Broadway and now teaches and performs in Savannah, Ga.

She said much of the credit goes to Orenstein.

"She's just so nurturing," Hester said. "I think that's one thing that really held our group together. We really were like a family. She was our mama bear and took care of us and taught us so much."

Betsy True was an original member when she was 15 and also went on to Broadway. She said the group was connected to the spirit of the early days of the planned community.

"Jim Rouse loved the Young Columbians," True said. "It was all so new and idealistic and fresh and fun, and there wasn't anything jaded about it. It was pure heart, the whole kind of experience of that time."

True, a playwright and performer who lives in New York, said the connections among the members remain strong today.

"We were all kind of growing up together," she said. "This reunion for me is much more sentimental and meaningful than my high school or college [reunions]. ... These are people I did come of age with in a very specific environment."

sandy.alexander@baltsun.com

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