At Young Actors’ Theatre Camp in Boulder Creek, they don’t just train budding thespians, they help kids to discover their true selves. Photo by Chip Scheuer.
With blue eyes, curly blond locks and a round babyface, 35-year-old Shawn Ryan was teased a lot growing up. He says as late as the eighth grade adults would ask him if he was a little boy or a little girl. “That probably made me an introvert,” he admits.
In his career as an actor and jazz/cabaret singer who is perhaps best known for reaching the semifinals on the first season of America’s Got Talent, his look has helped him score some offbeat roles. He once appeared on the 2007 ABC series Women’s Murder Club as “transgender narcoleptic drag king Karen Adams.” But it was a long journey, and Ryan claims theater saved his life.
“In high school I got a lot of, ‘hey fag’ as I was walking down the hall. Kids can be so mean to one another. I didn’t even know I was gay. I just knew people called me fag. I remember asking my sister like, ‘What is a fag?’”
But after a trip to New York to look at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts, where he eventually went to college, everything changed. “I remember coming back and being like, ‘There’s a whole world out there!’ So when my senior year started I walked across those boys that called me fag every morning and I finally stopped and I went, ‘Are any of you gay?’ And they were like, ‘No.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, I just wanted to know if you’re calling me this name because one of you is interested in me, or are you just doing it to be mean?’ I am not kidding, it stopped that day.”
Ryan is co-director of the Young Actors’ Theatre Camp in Boulder Creek, which he founded with his partner John Ainsworth. In addition to the professional instruction, a big part of the camp’s purpose is to give kids that same sense of empowerment that theater gave Ryan when he was in high school.
“Some of these kids are never going to go into the performing arts,” says Ainsworth. “But the experience that they’ll have gained from being in a place where they’re not judged, and they can be how they want to be or try something new without fear of being called stupid, or being called dumb or gay or fag or whatever—that’s an experience that literally can flip their whole world.”
I’ma Be Me
Indeed, at this camp—which has three sessions, each two weeks long, every summer in the Santa Cruz Mountains—the kids and staff all operate under one guiding principle: Be whoever you want to be.
For the two weeks they’re here, everyone is expected to forget the definition the real world has created for them. Instead, they imagine the person they want to be from scratch, and then just be him, or her, or the Hulk, or whatever.
The effects of this are plain to see: The kids, ages 8-18, go from breakfast to activities carrying puppets, or wearing cartoon-patterned footie pajamas, or decked out in vampire makeup, growling “I’m crying blood” at reporters they have never met before. The staff is unfazed by this display: to them, this is the mark of a successful session.
“From the day we’re born, we’re defined by other people,” says Ryan. Outside the cabin he and Ainsworth share at the camp near Boulder Creek waves a rainbow flag proclaiming “Born This Way”—the Lady Gaga lyric. “The only boundaries are the ones you set on yourself.”
Ryan and Ainsworth, both working actors in Los Angeles, have run the camp for 12 years. As the only camp of its kind in the Bay Area, it attracts kids from as far away as China and Singapore, and as close as Santa Cruz and Aptos. They come because they love performing and want to learn how to do it from professionals—working television and stage actors who drop in for a couple days at a time and teach master classes in which they offer up prize tips on everything from vocal technique to headshot poses, insider information many professional adult actors may never learn.
Focusing on all aspects of “The Industry”—from acting, singing and dancing to filmmaking, choreography and casting—the camp is definitely geared toward the budding professional actor. In fact, there already are some young pros in their ranks.
“One of the kids in this session—Charlie—he auditions all the time,” gushes Ryan. “He’s the voice of the Leap Frog video games. So when it turns on and you hear, ‘Wanna play?’ that’s Charlie.”
The Young Actors’ Theatre Camp is the only “top five” kids’ acting camp that doesn’t require auditions to get in, says Ryan. Because of that fact—along with its price tag of $1,750 for a session, quite reasonable compared to over $3,000 at the other camps like it—“We open for registration and we sell out within like an hour. It’s like a concert ticket,” Ryan says. YATC also offers several scholarships to homeless and at-risk kids.
For the campers who don’t have the added confidence that no doubt accompanies amphibian-themed voice-over success, the whole “be whoever you want” thing has to be encouraged a bit.
“I’ll have parents call and say, ‘She’s interested in singing, but she’s not a great singer,’” admits Ryan, adding a quick caveat that, “I mean, obviously the kids who come to this camp have great parents who send them to this camp, so they’re great parents.”
But when that kid gets to camp and goes into her first voice lesson with her head down, saying she’s not a great singer, that’s when the camp initiation really begins.
“I’m like, ‘OK, let’s tack three words onto this: Up until now,’” says Ryan. “So anything you put out into the universe that’s negative about yourself you can always tack on ‘up until now.’ And you can say that as many times as you need to, because we have to reprogram ourselves.”
Escape From L.A.
Ainsworth is just back from Los Angeles, where he auditioned for a Paranormal Activity-type movie. Now he dangles his legs over the arm of a couch outside their cabin, underneath the “Born This Way” flag. Ryan sits in a plastic chair that until a few moments ago had a pink boa and a strand of fake pearls occupying it. (Jokes Ryan: “These are actually real pearls. We just have so many we’re like, ‘Throw them wherever.’”)
“I’ve been called into this one casting office that does all the Lifetime, Hallmark Channel movie-of-the-week-type things. They’ve called me eight times in the last seven months for eight different films,” says Ainsworth, who wears jeans and a faded baseball cap. “So it’s like, they really like me and really want me to be in one of the films, but they’re trying to find that perfect fit.
“Shawn, did you tell the reporter about the Macy’s thing?” he asks.
Ryan flew back to Los Angeles last week to audition for a national Macy’s spot, and is currently “on avail,” meaning he is one of two people they are considering for the job and is expected to keep the shoot dates available, kind of like a wedding “save the date.”
“Yeah, the phone call’s coming in today,” Ryan says with a wink in my direction. “We’ve already decided.”
“He said that on Saturday,” Ainsworth explains, “and I said, ‘Babe it’s Saturday.’ And he said, ‘It’s comin’ through on Monday.’”
Today is, by the way, Tuesday.
“OK, Tuesday,” Ryan shrugs. But then, he looks at the phone, and some textbook actor insecurity shines through. “It’s so hard!” he says playfully, throwing his arms in the air. “Please call!”
There are 100-120 kids at each session of the camp, and around 50 full time teachers and counselors. The staff is encouraged to fly back to Los Angeles for any and all auditions that may come up during camp.
“We understand that the industry is what calls first,” says Ryan. “If you get a job in Los Angeles go, go, go, go. Come back and show the kids that you just did an episode of you know, Big Time Rush.” [Big Time Rush is a Nickelodeon series about four former hockey players from Minnesota who move to Hollywood and form a boy band.]
Excited for the chance to see their camp director on the big screen, the kids eagerly ask Ainsworth how his most recent audition went. He jumps on the opportunity for a teaching moment.
“Honestly, in this industry you have to go and do the audition and then walk away from it and forget about it,” he tells them, “because you likely will never hear if you don’t get it. You only hear if you do get it. And there’s like 40 other actors that were going in for the same role.”
Princess Power
It’s day nine of the camp’s second two-week session, and Ryan is making morning announcements. He brings up the hidden-talent show that is happening later today at lunch, and a little girl wearing a pink t-shirt, a rhinestone tiara and pink sweatpants that look like they’ve seen a few days’ worth of outdoor playtime raises her hand.
“This is Natalie Tanner, everyone,” says Ryan, who wears teal shorts and a newsboy cap over his blond curls. He invites her to come stand with him at the front of the cafeteria and everyone applauds, because they applaud at almost everything here. He continues, with more than a touch of “hey girl” punchiness in his voice: “We all have our inner child, and this is exactly what I picture my inner child to look like—always wearing a tiara, sparkly and excited for the day.”
Miss Tanner has an announcement regarding the talent show: “My thing is, my dad forgot to bring my violin, and I do play it.”
Ryan feigns panic. “Can anyone whittle a violin before the talent show?” But luckily that won’t be necessary—a big kid offers to let Tanner borrow hers. Whew.
“Look at that, Natalie, we magically got you a violin!” says Ryan. As Tanner takes her seat, everyone applauds again. Why not, right?
Dream Boarders
During the day, the campers have the opportunity to take a range of classes from working professionals. There’s a film class, scene study, dance and even a “Dream Board” class taught by Ryan’s mother, who is a professional motivational speaker. (Dream Boards are collages with pictures of your goals—think The Secret.) Master classes from big names such as Sutton Foster, who starred in Thoroughly Modern Millie on Broadway, as well as Jonathan Groff and Darren Criss from the hit FOX series Glee, are one of the camp’s biggest draws. Campers are even invited to sign up for coveted one-on-one sessions with the celebrities.
Today there is a class called “Power Breathing” taught by Chris Dilley, a professional singer and teacher who currently tours with an a capella theater show called Voca People. Dilley has a bright white grin and a muscular chest. He plays piano and leads the kids in a singing warm-up where they belt vowel sounds in different octaves. However, there is a catch. The kids each have a plastic straw and have been instructed by Dilley to try to sing the exercise while sticking their tongues out and using them to hold the straws just underneath their lower lips.
“Our tongue has a habit of tightening up when we sing,” he explains, which can cause it to go back and block the hole leading to the air supply and limiting the power of a singer’s voice. “This exercise is about teaching the tongue where it should be.”
While most of the kids stumble through the exercise, catching their straws as they drop—the tongue is a muscle that needs to develop strength just like any other—Dilley holds his straw easily with his tongue and plays the piano with both hands. Afterwards he has them stretch by sticking out their tongues, then wag their heads from side to side like dogs.
“Whose tongue is sore?” he prompts. Everyone nods and moans. That’s good, though. “Did you think you were just gonna sit in a chair for an hour and ‘la la la?’”
The Show
As the lunchtime talent show takes place near the picnic tables outside the main cafeteria, everyone is remarkably attentive. Unlike adult open mic nights, where the performers go into self-absorbed trances a couple slots before and after their individual sets, these kids give their full attention to whomever is onstage and, of course, treat them to raucous applause when they finish.
The talents are not quite what you would expect, either. While there are some spot-on drama camp moments—one girl belts out a perfect soprano opera while wearing pink gym shorts—a lot of it resembles the kind of stuff you might see at any summer camp’s talent show. One boy does the moonwalk. A girl impersonates a parrot, saying “Polly wants a cracker” in a high-pitched, nasal voice . One kid, who is missing a front tooth, says his talent is squirting liquids through his teeth. Someone else does a backbend, and one girl reads a poem she wrote: “Eternity, tranquility, serenity—the key to be.”
When it is time for Natalie Tanner’s much-anticipated violin solo, the instrument is too big for her to support on her own. She is one of the littlest kids at camp. But again, it is no problem. The owner of the violin, a teenage girl wearing knee-high lace-up Converse sneakers and a monkey hat, holds up the other end of the violin for Tanner. Another kid holds up her music book. Tanner performs a song very slowly, with pauses between each note for her to get her fingering and bow placement right. The campers and staff hang on every note. When she’s done, the crowd erupts into the biggest applause of the day.
Drama With No Drama
After the talent show, a few teenage campers sit down for an interview. They’re quick to explain why they feel so comfortable here.
“Meanness is, like, not an option here. You get kicked out of camp if you’re mean,” says 13-year-old Natalie Cheyette of Burlingame. Cheyette got stage-mommed into the industry, landing a job as a department store model when she was just four years old. She says she likes performing because of the attention, and being at camp because of the friendly atmosphere and how everyone has similar interests. “I am not much into sports, and many of the people here are also not that much into sports, so you don’t have to make small talk about sports,” she says.
“It would be really hard to make a movie out of this, ’cause there’s no drama. Everyone’s so nice and there aren’t mean girls,” adds 15-year-old Sara Narragon, who is from Santa Cruz. “You learn more than just performing here, you learn how to treat people. I’m probably gonna leave here and somebody’s gonna say something mean to me and I’ll be like, ‘OK, that’s cool!’”
Sally Shields has long, straight hair and a laid-back ingénue look that casting agents could probably describe as a “Mischa Barton type.” Shields is still glowing from a recent master class with LA casting director Ty Harman.
“He was sitting over there and I went up and introduced myself and after a [brief] conversation he was like, ‘Definitely get Shawn to tell me if you come down to L.A. anytime, I’ll give you my information.’”
Like her campmates, she is quick to assert that, yes, she wants to make it. Yes, these kids want to be famous.
“Everyone wants to perform,” says Shields. “No matter what aspect— acting, singing, dancing—everyone is here because that’s what they want to do.”
Ryan and Ainsworth just want to do their best to help them achieve those goals.
“People ask us all the time, ‘You guys will make such great parents, are you gonna have kids?’” says Ryan. “And we're like, ‘We have 500 kids.’ I may not have had any kids of my own, but I definitely feel like I've had a hand in raising a couple. And I'm so proud of them all.”
