Youth Ensemble of Atlanta: Empowering Youth Through the Performing Arts

"We are a small but responsible organization," says Deborah Barber, executive director of the Youth Ensemble of Atlanta (YEA). But a quick look at the stats for this thriving arts organization and "small" doesn't quite come to mind. While many youth theatre companies fall defunct in a matter of years, YEA stands on the fringes of its 20th anniversary boasting of an ensemble of seventy young people ranging in age from eight to twenty-four, and a six-year track record with 100% of YEA alumni graduating high school and going on to college — and 98% pursuing the study of or a career in the arts. And, if those numbers aren't enough, a quick encounter with any member of the YEA family shows that in the eyes of the youth touched by the organization over the years, YEA has not only served as the catalyst for defining, pivotal moments in their young lives, but has also immeasurably shaped their future aspirations as artists and humans.

Filling a Need

"I was there — at the start of the YEA. I drive by that building all the time and tell my son about the practices there. We still go around quoting from the Rhymes and Reasons play."
— Tanesha Floyd, YEA alum

Founded in 1990, YEA is the South's premiere African American youth theatre company begun with the intention of filling the void of artistic outlets for young people. "All of us really felt that young people had a need to be creative, but that there was not a place to do it," says Barber. "It was time that we fulfill that need in our community."

Under the artistic direction of Freddie Hendricks, YEA's first production, Rhymes and Reason, confronted issues of child abuse. "I was extremely inspired by Freddie's mode of creating ensemble work," recalls YEA alum Maiesha McQueen, currently the music composer for the touring ensemble Progress Theatre. "YEA gave me the understanding that the creative process could start with me. There wasn't a hierarchy of creativity, but collaboration. YEA taught me that I had agency and I considered myself to be a music composer at fifteen because of that experience."

Following this first production, Hendricks, Barber, and choreographer Charles Bullock began the hard work of launching YEA as a full-fledged theatre company and organization that has gone on to produce hundreds of working artists. Since its inception, YEA has provided the young people of metro Atlanta with scholarship-funded training in the performing arts based on its commitment to the socio-economic diversity of its members. "With the first set of kids, if we had charged for classes, most of the kids would not have come. Very few had parents who would actually pay for classes. They would pay for…"