By KAREN WILSON Palisadian-Post Contributor The road to Broadway stardom may be long, but one young Palisadian has already started the journey. Helene Yorke, 20, spent the summer making her professional acting debut as a member of the resident company at Music Theater of Wichita, which boasts one of the top summer stock programs for collegiate performers in the country. “It was awesome,” she says of the experience. “Best summer of my life.” For most people, Kansas isn’t the stuff of dreams. Then again, Yorke isn’t most people. Singing and dancing since age 3, she cut her teeth at Palisades Charter High School, performing leads in “Les Mis’rables” and “Crazy for You.” (Fellow students voted Yorke “Drama Queen” in the class polls.) After graduating in 2003, the honors student headed to the University of Michigan (UM), renowned for its top-notch theater program. In her first year at UM, Yorke was the only freshman cast in a featured role in the spring musical production of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which she played a member of the Soul Trio, a Supremes-esque girl group. As a sophomore, she understudied the roles of Cassie and Val in “A Chorus Line,” another step up the speaking-parts food chain. After “Chorus” had finished its run, Yorke began weighing summer options. In theater circles, it is widely held that a “summer stock” experience’when amateur actors spend time in a professional environment’is an important step for collegians. “If you perform a show for school, it’s more about that educational process,” Yorke says. “Summer stock is a nice bridgeway before doing Broadway or a company residency.” With that decided, she set her sights on Wichita and St. Louis MUNY, two theater companies whose stock programs are highly regarded. Yorke’s first lesson on the ins and outs of professional acting came during the cattle call: “To stage actors, auditioning is a job.” And it’s tough’her St. Louis tryout called for Yorke to sing 16 bars of music in front of an audience comprised solely of her competition. (“During auditions, I don’t worry about what other people are doing… if you’re worried about other people, you’re not growing.”) She nailed it. “Nerves are the anticipation of failure,” Yorke says, “a pointless emotion.” Her unique audition arsenal included songs from the obscure, difficult-to-sing Broadway shows “Mack and Mabel” and “Flora, the Red Menace.” At the end of the process, Yorke was offered jobs at both Wichita and St. Louis MUNY. She took a road less traveled and turned down more prestigious St. Louis. “Wichita offered me the role of Val in ‘Chorus Line,’ and a chance to perform in all five of their summer shows,” she explains. “At MUNY, I would have only been able to appear in three musicals. I would’ve gotten my Actors’ Equity card there”‘all actors appearing with that company must be members of the stage actors’ Equity guild'”but then I would’ve been forced to turn professional, and I never would have been able to do summer stock. I want time to learn more [as a student] before I turn pro.” Out of Wichita’s 500 applicants, 350 were invited to audition, and from that group, just 22 were invited to Kansas. Yorke was “thrilled” to get the job. “What I love about theater is that it’s a constant learning process,” she adds. “Summer stock is a natural progression.” Yorke arrived in Wichita prepared to work: “We staged five musicals in 10 weeks.” She was featured in the ensembles of “Seussical,” based on the books of Dr. Seuss; “Aida,” adapted by Elton John from Verdi’s opera; Mary Hart’s “Once Upon a Mattress,” and composer Maury Yeston’s “Phantom.” And, of course, “Chorus Line,” directed by Kerry Casserly, a disciple of the late Bob Fosse who had also directed Yorke in the UM incarnation. “We’d rehearse each show for 10 days,” Yorke recalls. “And we performed for paying audiences Wednesdays through Sundays. Often, we’d practice an upcoming production all day, then go out and perform a different show at night.” She had no problem memorizing lines and dance routines, but Yorke found overlapping “hard…the nice thing about a long rehearsal period is that you develop a relationship with the show and characters. In Wichita, there was no chance to do this. It was an enormous amount of material in such a short time.” (The average Broadway show has a longer rehearsal period than Yorke’s entire tenure in Kansas.) Well-known actors flew in for each production, and Yorke shared the stage with theatrical heavyweights such as Darren Ritchie, late of Broadway’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” and Nancy Lemenager, recently of the Great White Way’s “Movin’ Out” and “Never Gonna Dance.” “I remember sitting in audiences and idolizing these actors. The biggest learning experience of the summer was seeing their processes, how they prepared,” says Yorke. Another eye-opener was audience reaction to “Chorus Line,” which contains frank discourse on sexuality. “My character’s solo song was called ‘Tits and Ass,'” Yorke says. “And we were in the Bible Belt! We cut swear words from the show, but there was still local outcry. And the part they were really complaining about was my character! It was interesting, to say the least.” Asked to describe an average Wichita rehearsal period, Yorke can hardly contain her excitement: “We’d spend two days dancing and stage blocking, and four or five days learning the music. Then sitzprobe [singing to full orchestral accompaniment for the first time], and a full dress rehearsal on Tuesday night, which was always a fiasco! On Wednesday afternoon, we’d fix stuff that had gone wrong during full dress, then on Wednesday night, we opened to paying audiences.” Those spectators often sold out the company’s 2,500-seat theater. “I was about to sing my solo in front of 2,500 people, and I was like, ‘Yeah. Okay,'” she says. “I thought, ‘I got here, and I’m gonna take the most I can from it.’ No nerves.” (For the record, the Wichita Eagle’s critic gave her “special kudos.”) The connections Yorke made with fellow actors will prove invaluable. Wichita alums include Tony award winner Kristin Chenoweth and nominee Kelli O’Hara. Her inner circle includes UM roommate Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who originated the role of JoJo in the original Broadway company of “Seussical.” “The guy playing JoJo in our production needed pointers,” Yorke recalls. “I was holding out the phone saying, ‘Do you want to talk to the original?'” Making the trek to see “Chorus Line,” meanwhile, were dad Rhos, who works in software; mom Andrea, a seller at Village Books, and Helene’s grandmother. Along with her younger brothers Sudsy and Lance, all are supportive of Yorke’s career’and her recent name change. “It was time for a stage name,” she says (her legal moniker is Helene Dyke). “Yorke is my great-grandmother’s maiden name. My grandma gave me permission.” Next up? Two more years at UM, and then’who knows?’Broadway. “My goal is to be happy doing what I love,” she says. “And to win a Tony.” Careful, Helene. You might just achieve both.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
