Be the Sun.
It’s heard in the musical “Free to Be You and Me”, a Musical Theater for Young People (MTYP) production.
It’s seen on the colorful shirts of the MTYP participants.
It’s in the back of the minds of the participants as they audition, rehearse and perform a musical in one week.
It’s a defining feature of MTYP and its mission.
According to sophomore and MTYP participant Katherine Viviano, ‘Be the Sun’ encourages the participants to be their own light for others.
“Once you do an MTYP show, you learn to be yourself and you don’t need to be anyone else in order for people to like you,” Viviano said. “Don’t depend on someone else’s light or someone else’s influence to make you you.”
Getting Involved
When MTYP director Cary Danielson-Pandzik moved to Kansas City from Wichita and wanted to start up MTYP in Kansas City, she didn’t know anybody in theater. According to dance teacher Andrea Skowronek, Danielson-Pandzik didn’t know any choreographers so she asked a friend of hers who was also in theater for a recommendation. The friend recommended Skowronek for the job.
“I got the job really just through recommendation and word of mouth,” Skowronek. “But we hit it off because I love working with kids and so we started doing shows together every summer.”
Skowronek has been working with MTYP for 20 years now. Today, her daughter, sophomore Marina Vianello, also participates in MTYP shows. According to Vianello, she has been participating in MTYP shows since she was 7.
“I just started because [my mom] got to do it and I knew the director,” Vianello said.
Viviano also began performing with MTYP at a young age.
“I started when I was 8 with day camp, which is the little kid show they do,” Viviano said. “I’ve done theater and dancing since I was like 2 and my mom was just looking around for theater programs to get involved with and [MTYP] was one of the first one’s and a couple of my friends were involved.”
Senior Mayme Marshall began performing 8 years ago after a friend she danced with introduced her to MTYP. Unlike Marshall, Vianello and Viviano, sophomore Christi Backer only began performing with MTYP last summer.
“My brother’s girlfriend did it, so he would do it,” Backer said “Once he graduated, I decided to do it when I knew Marina and Katherine Viviano did it too.”
Non Stop Musical
According to Marshall, the MTYP shows are unlike any high school shows due to their structure.
“When I do shows with MTYP, they are only a week,” Marshall said. “We usually start on a Sunday and then work through Friday. Then Saturday afternoon, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, we have performances, so basically a show is assembled in 5 days.”
According to Backer, auditioning for each season’s show differs.
“The summer shows, you go on a Sunday and you audition and you find out that night,” Backer explained.
According to Viviano, everyone is in a big room and each person goes on stage and sings in front of everyone for their audition. After the singing audition, there is a group dance audition and then callbacks for the main roles. While some people get really nervous, Viviano says she tries to remain calm and help calm down those who are nervous.
“We don’t judge people,” Viviano explained. “Some people screw up so bad it’s not even funny, but no one remembers in the end.”
According to Viviano, the auditions for the annual winter and spring shows are prior to the rehearsal and performance week.
“Auditions are like a week or sometimes more before so then you have extra time to learn your lines, but the show is still put together in a week,” Viviano said. “You just go in and there are usually 3 or 4 [directors] and you give your song to the accompanist, they play it, and you sing.”
Because the show is rehearsed and performed in a week, rehearsals are long. According to Viviano, rehearsals last from 9 am to 9 pm the week leading up to the show. The performers rehearse vocals from 9 am to noon, have lunch, and then begin blocking or acting out who’s going to go where on the stage and choreography. According to Viviano, blocking and choreography practice lasts from 1 pm until 6 pm for the first couple of days. After the first couple of days, they start running the show after dinner.
According to Skowronek, due to the long rehearsal hours, the performers have little down time.
“You only take a break when you are eating breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Skowronek explained. “It’s very ‘go,go,go’ and there is no time to just sit in your room.”
According to Viviano, because the program is very intense, you have to be dedicated.
“You really have to be dedicated to it and that’s why the shows always come together because everyone really loves it and everyone’s determined to put out a really professional show,” Viviano said.
Preparing for the Show
While the performers only prepare during that week, as choreographer, Skowronek has to prepare the dances before the Broadway at Baker camp.
“It usually takes me a good two weeks before the show, before the camp [to choreograph the show], because I look at videos of the show or maybe things that I have done before that might apply to kind of get ideas,” Skowronek explained. “I read through the script, I listen to the music over and over and take notes. Then it takes me a couple hours for each dance to go to the studio and dance things out.”
Although she plans out the dances ahead of time, Skowronek said some changes will be made. 
“When I get there, I always have to change things depending on spacing and sometimes we’ll cut a page of music and dialogue and that will change it,” Skowronek said. “I just have to be open to changing things quickly so I don’t ever fully choreograph it until I am there, but I do have most of it planned out.”
Once at the camp, Skowronek must teach the dances to the performers. According to Skowronek, she must be organized in order to keep the performers busy and focused.
“Usually, we [practice] the big group numbers first and then save a duet small number for later in the week,” Skowronek said. “We don’t always do it in show order, but we usually start with Act 1, do the big Act 1 numbers and then do the big Act 2 numbers.”
When Skowronek is working with a smaller group of performers on a dance, the other performers will go work on costuming with the costume director, run lines or block scenes.
Love for Musical Theater
For both Backer and Viviano, MTYP has proved to be a close knit group.
Backer likes the way the program is set up.
“I do kind of like the pace of the program, how its fast and going and moving,” Backer said. “Since you are with those people and working with them for long hours during the day, you just get close with everyone.”
According to Viviano, MTYP is a family environment that allows you to get closer to others.
“My closest friends that I think I will ever have have stemmed from MTYP and it’s so cool to have people from St. Teresa’s get more to join and then you just get that much closer to them,” Viviano said. “[Christi Backer and Marina Vianello and I] were acquaintances [before MTYP], but since MTYP and St. Teresa’s, we’ve become such good friends.”
According to Marshall, people who perform with MTYP are different than people who perform in high school shows. Marshall believes MTYP increases one’s passion for musical theater differently than high school musical theater does.
“A lot of people that do musical theater are passionate about it, but there is a difference between school musical theater and outside of school musical theater,” Marshall said. “The people in school, some are like ‘oh I’ll do it because I’m bored and I don’t really have anything else to do,’ but with MTYP, everyone is passionate about it, so it makes you personally more passionate about it and just makes you love it even more because everyone around you loves it.”
Musical Theater Future
While Vianello says she will probably not go into musical theater as a profession, performing with MTYP has changed her views about being onstage.
“Musical theater has made me like being on stage more,” Vianello said.
Like Vianello, Backer does not plan on going into musical theater, but still enjoys performing.
“I like to sing, so [MTYP] is a channel for that,” Backer explained.
Unlike Backer and Vianello, both Viviano and Marshall plan on going into musical theater after high school.
According to Viviano, MTYP is great at preparing you in musical theater.
“It’s literally Broadway in Kansas City,” Viviano said. “It trains you so well if musical theater is something you want to go into.”
According to Marshall, because she is going into musical theater as her career, she needs a program that will prepare for what’s to come. Marshall agrees that MTYP does a good job preparing you for professional musical theater and any challenges that might come with that.
“In the professional world, sometimes you are stuck putting a show on in three days,” Marshall explained. “I feel like MTYP really prepares you to learn how to learn a show that quickly and to be able to get that organized and assemble everything in a short amount of time. Its definitely really helpful for the real world of musical theater outside of high school.”
Marshall attributes her love for musical theater to her work with MTYP.
“I don’t know if I would have the same love for musical theater that I have today if I didn’t have MTYP or was never involved with MTYP,” Marshall said.
Favorite Shows
Marina Vianello- Once on This Island
“I was one of the younger kids in the group, so it was kind of like me and these other kids were the kids,” Vianello said. “The show was really cool and deep.”
Katherine Viviano- Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Children of Eden
“Children of Eden is a really powerful, deep, get into, emotional show and it was my first big, not day camp middle school show,” Viviano said. “Roy Lightner, who is a choreographer from New York and originally from Kansas City, came back to choreograph [Dirty Rotten Scoundrels]. It was so good.”
Mayme Marshall- Thoroughly Modern Millie
“I played a character named Muzzy Van Hossmere and I usually don’t play those kind of characters so it was nice to play a different role and take a different challenge,” Marshall said. “I am usually stuck to playing the ingénue, which is a young girl. I mean I look older, but I can still play like early 20s and Muzzy was like 50, so it was a big change. Her mannerisms and the way she handled herself was a lot different than a way a character I would normally play does.”
STA accompanist an MTYP alum, current pianist with MTYP
STA staff accompanist Steven Karlin is also involved with MTYP. According to Karlin, he began in high school and since then stayed connected with the company.
“I was a freshman and I auditioned for a show to be in it and I continued with as many shows as I could do scheduling wise,” Karlin said. “I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to do it at the time, but my choir teacher at the time said something about it too, so I was like ‘well I’ll try it.’ I got in and I got hooked.”
After graduating high school, Karlin was asked back to the company to play the piano during rehearsals and performances.
“Once I graduated, Cary, who is the director, doesn’t normally take the just recent graduates, but she needed someone to play the piano for sectionals and such so since then I have kind of helped out as many times as I can,” Karlin explained.
Today, Karlin works as a pianist with the company whenever he can and also writes press releases for the shows.
Like sophomore Katherine Viviano, Karlin believes MTYP is like a family.
“They have an incredibly high rate of alumni who do come back and help just because getting started in it, the way it is organized, the way it is run, it becomes sort of like a second family,” Karlin said. “It’s not a chore to be involved in it. People want to come back and help.”
Karlin feels he will continue to work with MTYP in the future.
“Thinking of the future, I can’t really imagine [MTYP] not being a part of my life whether I am just seeing the shows and supporting them that way or writing another press release when they need it,” Karlin said.
