Young lives converge onstage

It's a view few of us ever get: standing beside a version of ourselves 10 years out.

But Mark Autry is 12 and doesn't think about that stuff. Nor does Matt McMahan, 21.

And that's fine, because right now, they're thinking about their shared character, the confused 9-year-old Poponel Skosvodmonit, and the odd little opera called "The Boy Who Grew Too Fast."

"Again," conductor Thomas Wilson tells the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs, and the finale of this multiwork collaboration with the Colorado Springs Conservatory swells with the voices of conservatory alumnus Matt, Mark, who started there at age 4, and 20 other conservatory students.

Be glad of what you are,
whether fat or thin,
short or tall,
black or white.

Be glad to be yourself,
don't try to be another,
for what you are nobody else can be.

This is the none-too-subtle moral to the Gian Carlo Menotti opera, and in the hands of these children, it sounds like a choir of sonic candy - bright, sweet and crisp. Mostly.

And maybe a punch line that's plenty clear makes some sense: recounting the quirky story is kind of like separating the strings of a spider web.

In it, Poponel (played by the 6-foot-tall Matt) enters a new school, where, as usual, his fourth-grade peers jeer at him for being so different. He finds a fix with the local mad scientist, who agrees to shrink him. But there's a catch: Poponel must always conform to the will of the group.

"And what if I say yes, when ev'ryone says no?" Poponel asks.

"You'll start to grow again, and within minutes you'll find yourself back to your size," says Dr. Shrinck.

Enter Mark, who plays the cut-to-fit Poponel. But Poponel must be true to himself and the supersized version returns to sing the moral.

Watching them, you can't help but think how they play the same role in life as well. Both have spent a significant part of their growing up studying at the conservatory. People say both are exceptionally talented. Both found themselves balancing the adult demands of time and ambition, everyday life and music as they carved out their busy childhoods.

Both have outsized dreams.

One boy. One man. One path, but different points along the way.

And both are on the cusp of changing their lives.

MARK

In one of the vanilla classrooms of the conservatory's wing in the Galileo School of Math and Science, 22 children churn in their seats the way only children can: They laugh, wiggle, talk and yawn like a giant disco amoeba.

Mark Autry is in the back row of it all, nestled in one of his ubiquitous hoodies and looking bored. They sing. They stop. More singing. Throughout, he works his eyebrows with a Marxian flair. He swings his feet. He whispers to friends.

"Who can show me how to conduct 4/4," asks Linda Weise, the executive director of the conservatory, which offers an intensive after-school program for the performing arts.

Weise is talking about the time signature, which dictates the meter of the music.

"Right," she says to the few tentative gestures. Then Weise diagrams the down, side-to-side and upward motion that the conductor's baton would follow for this passage. But knowing this count isn't enough in a Menotti opera: "The Boy" frequently changes meter.

That's challenging even for practiced singers. "Extra credit for anyone who'll (conduct) at the lunch table tomorrow."

She laughs. "How will that go, do you think?"

A tiny girl in the front row answers. "My friends don't know much that well."

Weise laughs again.

It's nearing the end of Mark's day. After his 8-to-3 at the Colorado Springs Charter Academy, he heads to the conservatory, where he studies until 7:30 or 8 p.m.

Most days, Mark would go on to yet another rehearsal.

"It's amazing. I don't think I have anything after this," he says, his freckles shifting as he gooses his eyebrows for emphasis. "‘The Full Monty' starts again tomorrow."

In the past year, Mark's taken roles in at least four community productions, including TheatreWorks' "The Grapes of Wrath" and now, "The Full Monty," which opens Friday at the Fine Arts Center. That means rehearsals that start about 8 p.m. and last until about 11 p.m. Then it's home, homework and bed.

He shrugs when asked whether he's tired. "Not yet," he says of this recent collision of two productions, "The Full Monty" and "The Boy."

But press him a little and his 12-year-old stoicism shows some cracks.

"It's pretty tiring at times. I like it a lot, so I just deal with it."

Mark comes by his work ethic honestly. His mother, Shantell, was a professional skater and, later, a skating coach, who about four years ago gave it up to work more closely with Weise and the conservatory. His father, John, is one of his baseball coaches. And Scott, his 9-year-old brother, is a nationally ranked gymnast. Both Scott and Madalin, 4, attend the conservatory.

"Yeah," Mark says, "there's a little bit of pressure there."

He smiles, something between resignation and pride.

"In someone like Mark, I have no idea where he'll go," says Weise, who saw Mark join the school after a preschool teacher suggested that piano lessons might address the 4-year-old's fine-motor problems.

"He could very well be playing in the World Series. He could make a cameo at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and blow everyone away. Or be the next musical theater wunderkind. He's that good."

Mark's voice is changing, and Weise says Poponel will inevitably be his last role as a soprano. His passion for sports, especially baseball, is hard to reconcile with the demands of his music, Mark says. Or maybe it's the other way around. He's not sure.

"Next year is probably going to be a decision year," he says. "Which is not going to be fun at all. I want to keep doing (music) through next year. After that, I'm not really sure."

Mark knows life in the theater can be tough. But right now, those problems are probably as intangible as the notion of adulthood itself.

"It was fun to work with the guys from New York," he says of actors brought in to play the leads in "The Grapes of Wrath." "To hear them talk. About how hard it is to get an audition. What you have to do to audition. You have to completely memorize it, they said, because someone else would have. It was just cool."

But not particularly hopeful.

Mark grins and nods. "It sounds cool now, but when it comes to reality - if it ever does - it won't be so great."

If.

"Each person has to make their own decisions," says Wilson, conductor of Chamber Orchestra of the Springs. "So many of the conservatory students are Type A personalities and succeed in academics, sports, arts and other areas. Talented young people have so many opportunities, and we certainly hope they keep the arts in their lives, but we can't make that decision for them."

And his mother isn't so sure that it has to be one thing or another. "As a parent, I don't want him have to make that huge decision, especially at age 12," she says. "But again, if he says, ‘I really want to do one thing,' I'll say, ‘Great, let's keep your fingers in little things so that you can go back if you want to'."

As time and the rehearsal creeps by, the three rows of children begin vibrating with distracted activity.

"Guys, please don't talk," says Weise, looking tired. "Stay focused. Only 8 minutes and 41 seconds.

"The beauty of these pieces is that they teach you to focus," she goes on of Menotti's notoriously difficult operas. "You have to immerse yourself in the story, the music and Mr. Wilson.

"You guys are going to be monsters after this."

Then, in these last minutes, a noise so rich, raucous and deeply recognizable erupts in the room. Yes, a whoopie cushion has made it into the production and someone feels the need to practice.

The room squeals with glee.

In the back of the room, Mark laughs.

MATT

In a booth at a downtown restaurant, Matt McMahan examines two sheets of paper that have probably been unfolded and refolded a hundred times. It's the set list for his senior recital at Oklahoma City University.

Sixty minutes. Seventeen songs. Two acts. Matt sings just about every second.
And when it's done in February, he'll be inches away from the Real World. Another actor looking for his next gig.

He isn't worried. At least he says he isn't. And with only one foot in adulthood, maybe he's not.

"Everybody always says, ‘Do you want to be on Broadway?' They make it seem like it's this impossible thing. Like it's ‘American Idol' or Broadway. I started to realize there are a lot of jobs to be had. Lots of jobs. ... It must not be this impossible thing.

"You know, I could go the rest of my life without being on Broadway."

He leans back in the booth, his green long-sleeve T-shirt tugging at masculine contours.

And when he smiles, he seems as dewy with possibility as a just-washed peach.

Growing up, Matt lived in Florissant and attended Woodland Park High School. He had years of music training, having fallen in love with musical theater during a stage production of "The Sound of Music." He was 6. Like Mark, he played sports and was pretty good. And then, in his freshman year, he was cast in the Broadway classic "Once Upon a Mattress."

"I said, ‘You know, I'm being recognized in this, and I love it more than other things I do," he says. "I don't do anything unless I'm really, really good at it, and I thought the best training is at the conservatory."

This is the way Matt talks. He's methodical, but his ideas are surprisingly fluid, so much so that he sometimes sounds as though he were working off a mental outline.

Like this: "Everything I do I think, what's the pinnacle? I really go into everything asking if I'm the best that I could be - whether it's the NFL or performing in musical theater."

Or this: "You're expendable. You're a product. That's the game."

Or this: "People may not recognize me on the street, but that's not why I'm here. I don't think that's what people want to work with. They want to have people who want to do that work."

When he talks about show business, it's just "the business."

"I think a lot of people use the word ‘business,'" he says when I ask him about it, "because we need to remind ourselves it is a business."

Smart. Grounded. And driven, says his mother, Misty McMahan.

"He's always laying the groundwork," says his mom, a school nurse. "He got a trainer.

He takes extra dance classes and takes yoga. He lays the foundation and takes the small steps to get there. It makes the people around him say, ‘He's working so hard at this, I want to help him make that happen.'"

Both Weise and Wilson say they've seen considerable growth in his singing during his college years. And Wilson asked Matt to appear at the Colorado Springs Philharmonic's New Year's concert.

"Matt is his own harshest critic, holding himself to only the highest standards," Wilson says. "I think we're witnessing the emergence of an important talent here."

"He's got the goods," Weise says simply.

Ask Matt whether he's going to make it, and he will likely turn the table on you.

"Really, success is not to be stressed out about paying the mortgage or paying a bill," he says, stretching his big, square hands across the table. "It's loving what I'm doing.

"Live life. Do the work. Just living is a success."

In the coming months, Matt will finish school, flying to gang auditions ("They're like conventions," he says) in Atlanta, Memphis and Chicago. In August, he'll be in Louisiana to direct. Then, in late September, he heads to New York to audition for holiday shows such as the one at Radio City Music Hall.

And somewhere in all that, he'll move to New York, taking advantage of the network of actors who have gone before him.

"Everybody talks about a backup," he says. "My parents keep asking me to go on and get at least a teaching degree. No. I can't."

He shakes his head. "In my gut, I've just got to go."

‘GOT TO GO'

The rehearsal is over, although Wilson and the orchestra will remain to work through the complicated score. Children run down the aisles and into the fireside room of the Broadmoor Community Church, where they laugh, wiggle, talk and yawn.

"So, what have you learned?" Weise asks the group.

"I learned not to talk during a performance," volunteers one girl.

"To watch Mr. Wilson," says someone else.

Mark crouches at the periphery of his peers. He listens, his face impassive. Occasionally, he throws a glance toward Matt, who's sitting at a table with Mark's mom. He smiles. He seems happy.

"It's like I never left," Matt says. "I just fall right back into it."

And as the crowd breaks up, Matt and Mark cut across the room in opposite directions.

Almost at the door, Matt turns to pick Mark out of the crowd and throws him a wave.

Mark smiles and waves back.

Old friends on their way.

THE REPERTOIRE

• Copland: "Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson;" with guest artist Judeth Shay Burns, soprano
• Copland: "Music for Movies"
• Menotti: "The Boy Who Grew Too Fast" with the Colorado Springs Conservatory, Charles Schnetzer, Linda Weise, Mark Arnest
• Go to chamberorchestraofthesprings.org for extensive program notes

DETAILS

"The Chamber Orchestra and the Conservatory: Together!"

When: 7 p.m. today and 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Broadmoor Community Church, 315 Lake Ave., today; and First Christian Church, 16 E. Platte Ave., on Sunday
Tickets: $15, $10 seniors and students; 633-3649 or at the door