Rich Young takes his final bow at Tahoma as drama director

Published 9:57 am Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Rich Young decided to take his final bow after 33 years of directing theater productions at Tahoma High.

In November, he submitted his resignation as drama director to the school, after the department had wrapped up the production of “Much Ado About Will.”

“I’m getting old,” he said. “It was just time.”

Young, however, will continue to teach at the school.

“We need someone with more energy,” he said.

With more than three decades at the school, Young has seen its student population change and transform, as well as the venues for the school’s theater productions. When he first arrived in 1979 after four years as a Russian linguist in the Air Force, the region was sparsely populated with farming families.

“It was still pretty rural,” he said.

This became evident to him when he put on the school’s first musical, “South Pacific,” in 1980.

When the cast was rehearsing the song “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair,” Young recalled, “A girl came up to me and said, ‘Why did you take the song out of a commercial?’”

The commercial she was referring to was for a Clairol hair product which used samples of the song.

“I realized how rural it was, how little the students knew of live theater,” he said.

Some things, however, never changed as the years went by.

Tahoma still does not have a theater or performing arts center. “South Pacific” was performed in the gymnasium, while plays were put on in the student lounge, where a sunken area allowed them to perform.

In 1981, when he put on “Brigadoon,” the school built its multipurpose room, where the school plays have been performed since.

“We had very minimal sets (in the lounge),” he recalled. “Virtually no set at all in most cases. We couldn’t have any background.”

The first play Young put on was “Bad Seed,” a story about a child serial killer based on a 1954 novel by William March and the subsequent Broadway adaptation.

“Because it was a shocking ending it went quite well,” Young said.

Young said he first developed his love for theater as a child when his family relocated often.

“I think it was the thrill of being someone else other than myself,” he said. “We would move around during school and I was always the new kid, so, theater was my outlet.”

Ironically, Young’s high school in New York had no drama program, and when landed at one that did he was only able to perform once, singing “Sun Rise, Sun Set” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“It was highly illegal (due to unpaid royalties),” Young explained. “I always try to make sure I pay my royalties.”

Young was finally able to perform at Boise College – now Boise State University – where he earned a degree in theater arts. After serving in the Air Force from 1971-1975, he earned his Master’s in Theater Arts at Washington State University and taught for two years at Kimberly High in Idaho before coming to Tahoma.

His theater experience while in school initially affected the type of plays and musicals he put on at Tahoma.

“I chose plays I had seen at other schools or been in during college because I knew them or had a better idea of what I wanted with them,” he said.

Over the years, Young dealt with several highs and lows with the program, from 2000, when “Fiddler on the Roof” brought the largest audience in to the year he had to cancel the production three weeks before its opening night when his son was sent to the hospital, as well as a year when he was forced to step down as drama director when his son was diagnosed with cancer for the fourth time.

Some years, he had only 11 students audition. Other years, 30 students would show up, requiring him to cut. Interestingly, when he put on his favorite play, “The Clumsy Custard Horror Show,” he saw the biggest student turnout, and decided to double cast rather than cut anyone.

“It’s twice the work in a short amount of time,” Young said. “It’s one of those where working with the two separate casts, you’ll tell one cast something and then you have to tell the other cast the same thing the next day, so it’s devoting twice the energy to one show.”

Although his last play involved selections from Shakespeare, Young said, he tended to avoid the Bard.

“Shakespeare doesn’t tend to draw too well,” he said. “The name scares people. They’re afraid of the language and they don’t realize seeing things makes it a whole lot clearer. I love directing drama because there is so much meat to them, something people can connect with. But people tend to be drawn to musicals. They’re just a huge amount of work.”

As for the students who participate in theater, Young said, there are varying reasons for them to get up in front of an audience on stage.

“I think a lot of the kids go through a phase where they dream of becoming the next Meryl Streep and making a million dollars,” he said. “For some, it’s like high school sports. They do it because they enjoy it while others see it as a springboard for a college scholarships.”

Staff at the high school are looking for a replacement for Young who reflected on the impact he hoped he had on kids.

“I wanted to make sure I gave students exposure to theater and hopefully give them a life long source of entertainment and pleasure,” he said. “I’ve seen the quality of acting grow tremendously because they’ve been exposed to so many other things, I have so many amazingly talented kids. That’s the one thing I will miss.”