Waylon and Willie scored a big hit back in 1978 with the ballad "Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, " with the mournful advice, "Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such."It's tempting to add, "Don't let 'em grow up to be actors, either," but that would be foolish, because it would go unheeded. There's a huge and ever renewing pool of talent out there, young persons of all ages with stars in their eyes, and we can only be grateful for the opportunities to watch them learn and grow.
Of all those theatre students in the universities, colleges, and high schools in and near Austin, perhaps one in a thousand will eventually be able to work full time in performance. Others will slide into different employment where from time to time they can astound with the assurance and the eloquence from theatre training. Some will choose education, either from the beginning or later on, with the recompense of regular if not spectacular earnings and a coterie of youngsters who want to understand what it's really like "out there."
Young persons in Central Texas have plenty of opportunities for quality theatre education, even outside the familiar paths of schoolwork. This past week I visited three of the best -- Lee Colée Atnip's annual "Broadway Bound" workshops, Austin Theatre's youth production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the reduced-scale Globe replica the Curtain Theatre, and Tex-Arts' three-week intensive academy production of Fame, the Musical.
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