Male and female; actor, dancer and singer; young and younger -- the Pittsburgh CLO ensemble, as we rediscover each summer, is one of the delights of the theatrical year. Today we talk with a talented trio: Patrick Cummings, back for his third season; Katie Terza, her second; and Kaitlyn Davidson, in her first.

The basic ensemble numbers 20, classed as either dancers or singers, although all do at least some of both and have to act as well. In the past, the classic CLO chorus (as it used to be called) did six shows, cranking them out on a nearly impossible schedule of which they were proud.

But this summer, because the "High School Musical" cast went on to start a national tour and the "Camelot" production that ends today is also a tour, ensemble members were hired for at most four shows -- "Oklahoma!," "White Christmas" and this week's "Cats," with fewer needed for the finale, "The Full Monty."

Ensemble members tend to cluster in their early to mid-20s, sometimes ascending into their 30s or dipping into their teens. And they come from all over, especially from Point Park University and Carnegie Mellon University, Cincinnati College of Music and the University of Michigan.

The archetypal ensemble member is just out of school and has auditioned unsuccessfully before, because ensemble work is highly competitive. It's also a valued grad school, with the pressure of staging big musicals on a high level in a short time, performing at night while rehearsing other shows during the day.

The day of our interviews, the ensemble was having "cat lessons," joked Cummings, who wasn't involved, since for "Cats" he's just a back-up singer in the pit. The two-week run of "White Christmas" and the week off for "Camelot" created a relatively relaxed ensemble rehearsal schedule, with a week for vocal work and a week for dance before such principals as Dee Hoty and Ken Prymus would arrive for full rehearsals under director/choreographer Richard Stafford.

Kaitlyn Davidson Click photo for larger image.

Kaitlyn Davidson

Although Kansan Kaitlyn is the CLO neophyte in this trio and probably the baby of the ensemble, she admits to having "been in the business for a while."

Growing up in Overland Park, Kan., a well-to-do suburb of Kansas City, "I was always singing and dancing around the living room," to Disney movies, especially. "Somewhere there's a video of me singing to an aquarium of fish when I was 5." She comes by it naturally, because her family was musical on both sides.

Kaitlyn started dance lessons at 3 and voice lessons at 8, then did shows for Music Theatre for Young People and appeared in "The Miracle Worker" at the professional Missouri Rep. Starting at 10, she worked at Kansas City's Starlight Theatre and also at the St. Louis MUNY, two of CLO's national peers. And she took a year off from high school to play Lady Jane Grey in a national tour of "The Prince and the Pauper."

"I loved the life of the tour," she says. "I didn't want the show to end." When she returned home, she transferred from her small Catholic high school to a public one with a theater program, and then for professional training she chose Cincinnati, where she just finished her sophomore year.

CLO has employed so many Cincinnati students, it was natural for her to audition. One Friday in January, after a big performance for Cincinnati patrons, she and friends jumped in a car at 10 p.m., getting here in time for the 9 a.m. dance audition.

"It was fun," she says. "I'd never done an all-night road trip or even been to Pittsburgh." She breezed through the call-backs the next day and got an offer. "Cats" audiences will get a good sense of Kaitlyn, since she has the role of Victoria, the sensuous white kitten she describes as "just coming into her womanhood."

Earlier this summer, the tall blonde with the shapely dancer's body was a prairie girl with a few lines in "Oklahoma!" and a dancer with a diva attitude in "White Christmas." And in "Full Monty," she'll play Estelle, "not a very nice person, sort of a girlfriend of Jerry's."

While some of her college peers are already auditioning in New York, she says she doesn't feel that itch. She intends to finish at Cincinnati and get a degree, because her parents are paying a lot ("I'm so lucky my parents are so supportive") and "I like school." Her long-range goal is "to be respected as a performer and a person -- and I want to be able to support myself."

Would she return next summer? "If they'll have me!"

Kathryn Lin Terza Click photo for larger image.

Kathryn Lin Terza

Dark-haired and petite, Katie will play Demeter and part of the Macavity trio in "Cats." She comes with experience: in January, she played Victoria for Pittsburgh Musical Theater.

As that suggests, Katie is a Pittsburgher. Born in Duquesne and initially raised in Peters, she moved with her father's job to Indiana (the state) then back to Peters, where she graduated from high school in 2005. She spent a year at Point Park, then decided "to take a year off. ... I don't think school is for everyone. You do what you have to do, what makes you happy."

Along with performing for PMT, she's spent this past year auditioning in New York, where she's had many callbacks and made the replacement list for a touring musical. She has a model in her friend Paul McGill, who left Peters High School in his junior year to do "La Cage aux Folles" on Broadway and is now there in "A Chorus Line." There's also her Point Park friend Neil Haskell, her partner in the CLO's "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" last summer, who is now in "So You Think You Can Dance" on Fox.

Katie was originally headed for ballet. In eighth grade, she was in the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School. She also took classes at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts "and I loved to sing, but I was a little ballet kid." Then after her freshman year, she took the summer program at the American Ballet Theatre and had to decide whether to go full time.

It was the difference between the experience of the ballet corps and musical theater ensemble that decided her. "In musical theater, you get to make it more your own ... to have relationships with other [characters]. And I figured, how much money can you make dancing in the corps?"

Katie switched to PMT's Rauh Conservatory, where she's been in a half-dozen professional company shows, playing (for example) Cha-Cha in "Grease." Last summer, her first in the CLO ensemble, the high point was playing Sarah, one of the brides in "Seven Brides."

This summer's "Oklahoma!" is "one of the most fun shows I've done. I love the music and the story."

"Being part of the theater is so wonderful," she says -- whether you're a featured performer or not. "I've loved theater for so long, it's become like a family, like a parent, because it takes care of me. You learn something new every time you do a show."

Patrick Cummings Click photo for larger image.

Patrick Cummings

Favored with a small role in "Oklahoma!" (sheriff Cord Elam), Patrick stuck out because his face was already familiar from starring last fall at Carnegie Mellon in "The House of Blue Leaves," playing Artie, a New Yorker with dreams of escape into show biz.

That resonates: "I come from a long line of Brooklyn and Queens firefighters," says Patrick -- the first in show biz. He's the fifth of seven siblings, who now range from 17 to 37. "We're your basic Irish-Catholic family. As I get older, I realize I'm a stereotype."

He grew up in Rochester, N.Y., but he visited New York a lot. "They are incredibly tough men, my grandfather and uncles" -- the firefighters. His father, however, sidestepped the family destiny and is a real estate lawyer.

Patrick figures family size had something to do with his acting bent. "If there's that many kids around, you learn how to socialize. You have to learn how to get attention, so you're not just one of the crowd. ... I acted since I was little." But it was a high school director who made that stick by instilling "a need for art."

He's been in the CLO ensemble all through Carnegie Mellon, except for the summer he spent at the West Virginia Public Theater.

Patrick is one of seven musical theater majors in this year's Carnegie Mellon graduating theater class of 18. He's found himself impatient with the senior year focus on "the business of the business," with its concepts of type and marketability. "I don't want to be famous," he says. "The point is still the work. But you do need to be savvy."

The Carnegie Mellon senior showcase in New York resulted in a whirl of meetings with casting directors and agents. Then came the L.A. showcase and beautiful buildings "you feel like a terrorist just walking into," where he met casting directors as beautiful as actors. "L.A. is so damn seductive: 'You can work here,' " they told him. "'Do you want money?' "

But he plans to start his career in New York because of his family. "I'm kind of foaming at the bit. Everyone I know is there." His brothers says he has FOMS Syndrome -- Fear of Missing Something. "I need to sow my artistic oats. I'll be trying to get with a small theater company."