He’s All That

Alumnus Dashaun Young is known in musical theater circles as a “triple threat.”

Saturday night, when the lights go up and the musicians start to play inside the Honda Center arena, the audience will know why.

Caption: Dashaun Young

A three-time student cast member of Front & Center, Young will return to that stage Feb. 25 as master of ceremonies for the university’s 17th annual signature community outreach event.

Heart may be the evening’s headliner, but for patrons of the university’s award-winning theater and dance productions, Young and the high-spirited student cast are the draw.

Young’s talents as an actor, dancer and singer landed him a role in New York’s “Radio City Christmas Spectacular” back in 2004, when he was a junior theater arts major, and he’s been performing professionally ever since.

For the hundreds of thousands who saw “The Lion King” on Broadway, in London’s West End, Las Vegas or elsewhere around the country, Young, no doubt, captured their attention. He portrayed Simba, the crown prince, resplendent in feathered headdress and colorful, flowing robes.

In Rehearsals

Young just ended his run in the blockbuster musical’s Las Vegas production at the Mandalay Bay Resort and is “super excited” to be back in town, performing again for Front & Center. He arrived Sunday and has been rehearsing with other cast members and the show’s musical director, Mitch Hanlon. The theatre and dance professor is one of Young’s “fantastic” former faculty members, who “knows his stuff, definitely.”

Reflecting on the three years he performed as a student cast member of Front & Center from 2002-04, Young recalls being “on Cloud 9” when meeting the shows’ headliners — Christopher Reeve, Natalie Cole and Kenny Loggins. “I just remember how exiting it was for us to get to do an event like this … it was the show that everyone wanted to book.”

And nerves weren’t an issue then. “We were just so pumped and energized to be on that stage, I don’t think we got nervous.”

This weekend might be another story, he admits, characterizing Front & Center 2012 as “by far the shortest project I’ve ever done” with less then a week of rehearsal before going on stage.

Faculty Faves

Young is the first student from Front & Center to return as MC. During Saturday’s show, he will perform and also tell a few stories about some of his faculty mentors. Macarena Gandarillas, who teaches jazz and dance for musical theater in the College of the Arts, is one of them.

“We really push them to the limit,” she says of the students in the musical theatre concentration that Young was pursuing. “You have to be a triple threat to perform on Broadway,” adds Gandarillas, who spent 25 years dancing professionally and saw Young headed in that direction in his student days. “He’s a good all-around.” Among the traits she observed in the young performer: ambition, persistence and “a gorgeous voice.”

She cast Young as the lead dancer of “Faith” in the 2002 Fall Dance Theatre production. “He was very spirited, energetic … very ambitious and very funny.”

He remembers how she “was pushing me hard to keep up my dancing and take as many classes as possible.”

He did, and “oh yeah, it paid off.” After performing in “Radio City Christmas Spectacular,” Young landed a part in the first national touring production of “Hairspray,” and that led to a four-and-half-year stint as Simba in “The Lion King.”

“I’m so grateful for everything that I learned while I was there,” he says of his days at CSUF. “It gave me the skills that I needed to become a working actor.”

Grease Is the Word

During his CSUF years, he performed with The Preeminents in Concert Under the Stars and Vision & Visionaries, and was also cast in various campus productions. He sang in the ensemble of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” portrayed Richie in “A Chorus Line” and Teen Angel in “Grease.”

After touring with “Hairspray,” Young auditioned for the Broadway revival of “Grease,” not expecting to be cast, but aiming “to be seen” by those who cast major productions. Sure enough, he turned the heads of those in search of Simba for the national touring production of “The Lion King” and was invited to audition for that role.

In the years that followed, Young toured the country, debuted on Broadway and London’s West End and achieved the goal he had set for himself as a student performer.

“From the beginning, all I ever wanted to do was make a living as a working actor, whether I got to do Broadway, TV or film, that all seemed like extras as long as I could pay my bills,” he says.

Young was performing on Broadway in 2010 when his first film, “Sex and the City 2” was released. He was cast as one of the wedding singers and is seen in the opening sequence. He also recorded three songs for the film’s soundtrack. Summing up the experience, he says, "I loved it.”

Arriving at CSUF

Young was a junior in high school when his mother, Valora Blackson, was hired as associate director of the CSUF Career Center, so they moved from Buffalo, New York, to Southern California.

“She always loved theater, so we would go to the shows on campus and Concert Under the Stars and realized very quickly CSUF had a great musical theater program,” so Young set out to “try my luck at the musical theatre B.F.A.”

He’s followed his instincts successfully ever since — much to his mom’s delight. The former CSUF staff member will be in the audience at the Honda Center Saturday night. Having missed her son's previous Front & Center performances, she wasn’t about to miss this one. Like Young, Blackson also has returned to New York to live and work, so is hopping a plane to catch Saturday’s show.

Young now lives on the Upper West Side, just one subway stop away from Broadway, where he says he encounters other members of the Titan pride.

“I got a great education at CSUF. The program really trains you to be the best triple threat you can be — to be the best you can at acting, singing and dancing. That’s what puts you ahead.”