There's been more than one debut in Pittsburgh CLO's "The Music Man." Jeff Goldblum has gotten the bulk of attention, but musical theater is a collaboration. Also making its debut these past two weeks has been the 2004 CLO ensemble, the 20-person energy machine that provides the structure of song and dance, the bright setting within which the stars can shine.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette CLO ensemble members Zachary Prince and Ashley Lauren Smith take a break from their summer schedule to ham it up in front of Benedum Center. Click photo for larger image. "HELLO, DOLLY!" Where: Pittsburgh CLO at Benedum Center, Downtown. When:: Tues. through Aug. 1. Tues.-Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m.; some others. Tickets:$14-$50. 412-456-6666..

Ensemble members sing, dance and play small roles. In contrast to the chorus of yore, they are individualized and have to provide that sense of stage personality that fills in where the director's or choreographer's attentions do not have time to follow.

This summer, the ensemble debut was delayed because the season-opening "The King and I" was a national tour and the second show, "1776," was all character roles, without ensemble. But without the ensemble, "Music Man" would have no River City-zens to respond to Harold Hill's warnings of trouble and no dancing, singing young people to act on his Pied Piper message. And while the stars focus on their one show, the ensemble is already deep into rehearsals with star Victoria Clark for next week's "Hello, Dolly!" with "Me and My Girl" to follow.

Although a CLO ensemble needs experience, each year some get their professional baptism by fire and initial membership in Actors Equity. Such this year is Ashley Lauren Smith, veteran of just one year in the dance program at Point Park University. One step further up the ladder is CMU senior Zachary Prince, now in his second CLO season.

Cute, slim and talkative, Smith is the baby of the ensemble. She comes from Toledo, Ohio, which she calls "a great place to raise a family" but, for a dancer with ambition, "not much else." She started taking dance lessons at Daryl Jervis Dance Studio when she was 2, because "I was an only child and really shy. Mom put me into dance to interact with other kids."

Her parents both work with teenagers. The family tradition is athletic, and she says she tried it all -- volleyball, basketball, soccer, track. "They were all disasters; it just didn't come naturally." But dance did, and she stayed at Jervis for 17 years. She never got involved in high school shows at St. Ursula Academy because she was dancing 20 hours a week.

The odd result is that "The Music Man" is both Smith's professional stage debut and her first musical. "I was so amazed to see it all come together," she says.

She got the CLO job almost as a lark -- the person who comes to an audition with a friend and ends up getting cast. As the elimination audition proceeded, it may have helped that she wasn't as "I really need this job" anxious as some of the others. "I just had fun, like taking a fun class." It helped that she had been singing since age 3 with her grandpa, who had been in a doo-wop band.

Being the baby of the company can be intimidating, she says, but it's also a great "privilege, an honor, meeting people actually doing what I want to do. ... I'm learning what my type is and where to fit in."

In that, she's not unlike Goldblum the star. She giggles at his name. "Jeff gets us into trouble, moving around and laughing and throwing us off. He's a definite trouble maker!"

The curly-haired Prince also started dancing and singing young. Though he knows of no family connection to other Princes (Hal, Faith, Charles, etc.), in contrast to Smith, he does come from a performing background. His mother is a choreographer (his father is an insurance broker), but "she didn't push me at all. I had a knack for it. It was my soul food growing up."

He did that growing up in Laguna, Calif., where he took classes from age 11 to 16 at the Laguna Playhouse, which was "a lot like the CLO Academy, but more acting based," and he performed for its youth repertory company. The resident director taught theater at University High School in nearby Irvine, so Prince went there, where the arts seemed to be more important than back home in southern Orange County. "I also have a closet interest in marine biology," he says, but gradually theater won out.

Prince's first impetus came from dance and later he was heavily into voice, but now, at CMU, his chief interest is acting. His casting at there shows breadth: Last season he played Booth in "Assassins" and this fall he'll be Antonio in "The Duchess of Malfi," with a role in next spring's "Candide" to follow.

"They don't really know CMU on the West Coast," he says. He became aware of it going to Broadway shows and seeing it in the bios of performers he liked, and he knew two CMU predecessors in Laguna. He was accepted at a number of schools, including UCLA and NYU, and he visited them all, "but the second I got off the plane here, I knew it was right."

Now, three years later, he says the CMU "training is fantastic and the standards are the ones I want to hold myself to. But I don't like the political side."

He earned his Equity card last summer at the CLO, which is "great training." He's also appreciative of Pittsburgh, where he finds "a real sense of family and support," especially of theater, "more than on the West Coast. Theater is not an integral part of Orange County life."

Where do Prince and Smith go from here?

After his senior year at CMU, Prince assumes he'll head for New York. "I don't aspire to be famous but to do good work and earn the respect of my peers in the business."

Smith, however, is planning to head for New York right away. "A dancer's career is very short," she says -- bodies give out. "I'm ready to go and see what happens. Something tells me to go now; I can always come back to Point Park."

Her goals include the Alvin Alley school and dancing in "The Lion King." In a bit of serendipity, "The Lion King" tour was at the Benedum last winter when she was auditioning for CLO, and they expressed interest in her.

Looking ahead is "scary but also exciting," she says. Having seen her on stage, her mother has come around to trust her plan.

So the CLO ensemble continues to feed talent into the profession. For the CLO audience, it's at the heart of the pleasure musicals offer.

"The Music Man" continues through tomorrow. "Hello, Dolly!" starts Tuesday.