For actor, director, choreographer, producer, and professor Eric Jordan Young ’93, live theatre gives us a vital “mirror” that can offer “healing and a return to self”—where we can see ourselves and others more clearly “in the warmth of darkness.”
Now a longtime Broadway actor who was voted performer of the year by BroadwayWorld (Ragtime, Seussical, Look of Love, Chicago), Young fell in love with the stage as a seventh grader. “I did a production of George M! and caught the bug,” said Young about his debut at a theatre called ArtPark, near Niagara Falls.
Later that year, Young starred in Peter Pan at his school. “I still have my script with all the highlighted things. I thought I was a pro then,” he laughed. Even in his early teens, he had IC’s musical theatre program squarely on his radar.
When he eventually enrolled at IC, he especially loved the crimson-carpeted (“Red is my favorite color!”) Dillingham lobby walkway, which leads, literally and figuratively, to IC’s theatre and welcoming community—where he found inspiration and creative refuge.
“There was a genuine concern for who we were as individuals. I just felt like there was a buzz—a vibe and energy that was so palpable and rich and true and honest and caring,” he recalled. Young not only felt nurtured as an artist, but he also appeared in 13 productions and discovered the power of collaboration.
During one of his very first classes—Introduction to Theatre taught by Roxanne Rix—he walked into a crowded classroom and a student named Wendy Dann ’93 waved him over to sit next to her. “The rest was history!” said Dann, now an IC professor, as well as a playwright and director. “We would just sit and laugh,” remembered Dann.