Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Four members of the CLO performing ensemble -- Case Dillard, left, Johanna Brickey, Laura Yen Solito and Anderson Davis -- are hitting the stage in "The Who's Tommy," which opened last night at the Benedum. Click photo for larger image.

Looking back this spring from the eminence of 31 years and stardom on Broadway ("The Full Monty"), in movies ("Phantom of the Opera") and on TV ("Angels in America"), Carnegie Mellon University grad Patrick Wilson remembered that auditions for the Pittsburgh CLO ensemble were "the most stressful auditions I ever had -- 'Do your pirouette! ... Sing your high note!' " And he calls his two summers in the ensemble "one of the greatest jobs."

Just last week, looking at the current CLO ensemble as it rehearsed for last night's opening of "The Who's Tommy," Broadway regular Alice Ripley recalled her own stint in the "Tommy" ensemble on Broadway a dozen years ago. It "takes a lot of work," she said, "with each member playing something like 10 different roles" -- more work even than playing a lead.

"It's the ensemble that moves the action along," she said. You might also say that about the role of the ensemble in the whole CLO season. As leads come and go, the ensemble provides continuity, even this summer, working only the middle four shows.

To clarify, the ensemble is what, decades ago, was called the chorus, composed of equal numbers of singers and dancers, male and female. They're still divided that way -- 20 in all -- but now everyone does everything, including act. This summer, the group has reached its full size only now, for "Tommy" and the following "Carousel."

The CLO ensemble is as hard to get into as always, and it remains the desirable job Wilson remembers. It's often where young performers earn their Equity cards, de facto emblems of entry into the profession.

The 20 come from all over, but this year most come from Point Park -- a whopping seven. Carnegie Mellon follows with three, then one each from 10 other schools, including New York University, Penn State, Boston University and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

Call them Pittsburgh's hardest working group of young professionals in the making. The Post-Gazette set out to interview a representative sample.

Case Dillard

Case Dillard's "first dance partner" was Chelsea Clinton -- he was 8, and they played party guests in "The Nutcracker." As that suggests, Dillard, 22, comes from Little Rock, Ark., although you can't tell from his accent.

He started dancing lessons at 6, although he insists that when he was just 18 months, he already knew how to put "Thriller" on the record player and dance along in his diapers. Flash forward to age 15, when Dillard left home for two years in a ballet boarding school in Virginia, dancing "eight hours a day, six days a week."

It was too much.

"I was in trouble a lot," he recalls, "because I refused the cookie-cutter mold" -- and he wanted to do more than just dance. So he moved back to Little Rock, finished high school ahead of his class and earned Equity points at Arkansas Rep.

For college, he says, "I aimed high, but I didn't have any training -- I'd never sung a song alone on stage." So his auditions for Juilliard, Carnegie Mellon and New York University were unsuccessful. But he sent a tape to Point Park and arrived here "sight unseen."

"Thankfully, Point Park saw something raw and trainable. It's happenstance that I ended up where I needed to be."

He graduated last month. Along the way, from "dancing in the background" he found himself moved front and center in such Playhouse shows as "Jekyll & Hyde," "City of Angels," "Anything Goes" and "My One and Only." In the latter, Niki Harris was "so exacting, she drilled us so [much that] we could re-mount it [now] in three days."

As is common, it took Dillard three tries to make the ensemble. When he didn't get past the auditions after his freshman and sophomore years, he returned to Arkansas to work at a summer theater camp he'd been to as a kid ("teaching is another door down the road") and did summer shows in Little Rock and at West Virginia Public Theatre in Morgantown. Eventually he gathered almost enough points to get his Equity card, but all that was wiped out when the CLO job earned it automatically.

Last summer, Dillard backpacked through Europe with his brother ("52 cities in 75 days"), a trip he agrees may turn out to contribute more to his career than any other three months of his life. He's made another wise choice, too -- his girlfriend of several years, Ruth Zang, is not a performer but a stage manager, an intern at CLO. "She's a good personal manager," he jokes.

A week after "Carousel" ends, he'll be off to New York, sharing an apartment with Point Park friends who are already there. He'll start with open dance auditions, "cattle calls": "If my dancing is marketable, that's my foot in the door."

Laura Yen Solito

The only true Pittsburgher in this quartet, Laura Yen Solito is also the most experienced: This is her sixth year in the ensemble.

Born and raised in Dormont, she singles out an elementary school teacher, Miss Smith, who introduced her to the Center for Theatre Arts. She went on to the CLO Academy when it first opened, studying with Joe Franze and Buddy Thompson.

Solito figures singing is her strong suit, then acting, but she also danced a lot through high school at Keystone Oaks. She auditioned for CLO after her freshman year at Boston Conservatory and made it the next year, at age 19, on her second try.

After graduating from Boston Conservatory in 2001, she headed to New York. Half Italian and half Chinese, she assumed her Asian heritage would get her work in "Miss Saigon" or other ethnic musicals, but there turned out to be a lot more Asian performers in New York than she was used to seeing in Pittsburgh.

Perhaps that fueled her move home. "I felt I had unfinished business in Pittsburgh -- a great vocal coach [Richard Teaster] and a chance to be with my family." At the Pittsburgh Public Theater, she has appeared in "The Mikado" and "Pinafore" and as Antonia in "Man of La Mancha," adding Ted Pappas ("I couldn't have chosen better") to her roster of CLO mentors.

She has a cabaret act, "Inside Out," that she has done at the CLO Late Night Cabaret and elsewhere. "Cabaret is the most fulfilling thing I've done so far," she says, "being able to be yourself and use your life experience."

This summer, she appeared in the CLO's "Pirates of Penzance" as Edith, which is not usually an ensemble role. Clearly, she's one of the grown-ups in the ensemble, happy to add her experience to the mix: "It's like being on a pro sports team. There's such tremendous stress. You have to throw yourself into it with all your creative energy. It's scary on Monday nights [dress rehearsal]; and Tuesdays [opening nights] are almost an out-of-body experience."

Now 27, Solito is looking forward with a sharper focus. This fall she plans to make exploratory trips to New York: "You have to know when you're ready to be there, and I've grown a lot," she says. She assesses herself as an ethnic character type with leading lady aspirations and dreams of playing Evita.

Anderson Davis

Going into his senior year at Carnegie Mellon, Anderson Davis, 23, is another transplanted Southerner, showing no trace of his native Baton Rouge, La., accent. "CMU kind of rips that out of you," he says. Drawn to CMU by its reputation, he was surprised by Pittsburgh, having expected "smoke stacks and steel lunch pails."

Other than singing in his minister father's church, Davis came to performing late. An oboist for eight years, he auditioned for college music programs. But playing in the pit for his high school's "Oklahoma!" was "absolute torture ... I felt I was in a box; I had to get out," on stage.

He started at one of the best musical theater programs, the Cincinnati Conservatory, but realized he wanted a more acting-based program. "So I took a year off, worked at Banana Republic and did community theater." Then Carnegie Mellon surprised him with a generous financial aid package.

This is his second year in the ensemble. In "Tommy," you can spot him as Mrs. Walker's lover, singing a duet with Ripley: "She forces you to step it up!" And he is teaching himself the harmonica for another number.

As of last week, Davis called the work "very intense, doing 'Pirates' at night and rehearsing 'Tommy' in the afternoon -- super-legit G&S arias in one, and then you wail your guts out." This week, it's wailing at night and the arias (now by Rodgers and Hammerstein) in the afternoon.

Johanna Brickey

Johanna Brickey remembers the moment she was sure she was going to do musical theater. She was 17, watching "Aida" on Broadway with her mother. When it ended, "I sat in my seat -- and this is so corny -- I was just crying, so blown away. Mom asked 'what's wrong?' and people were stepping over me. I bought the CD, and when we reached Cape Cod we knew all the words."

Like Davis, Brickey transferred to CMU. Now 21, she grew up in Denver in "a perfect suburb -- strip malls, golden retrievers, SUVs -- I wish I'd gone to a city school with more diversity." She played violin and piano and began performing in middle school. But when she auditioned for many of the best schools (Michigan, Cincinnati, Boston Conservatory, CMU) and "didn't get in anywhere, I was just beside myself." She started at a nearby college, realized she had to get out and tried CMU again.

This is her first year in the CLO ensemble, succeeding on her third try. She agrees with Wilson that it's a stressful audition, a packed weekend with everyone determined to succeed.

You can spot her in "Tommy" as a nurse, singing "It's a Boy, Mrs. Walker" with Solito. She also plays the Specialist's Assistant -- the same ensemble role Ripley played 12 years ago on Broadway.

As to life in the CLO, "I had no idea it was going to be like this. I have to plan my days hour by hour." As she recites the schedule, the pressure is clear. "There's no room for tardiness or bumps in the road. ... But going to CMU, you're conditioned to a fast-paced schedule, to multi-tasking -- I'll listen to the next show on the bus or grocery shopping."

Pittsburgh already saw Brickey at Carnegie Mellon as one of the two Cunegondes in last spring's "Candide," and in the year ahead she will play Hope in "Urinetown."

Beyond that? "Wherever the wind blows me."

That's the professional life that awaits them all.