“In 1999, my brother and sister-in-law Damon and Bridget Taylor moved to Kansas City to be near family from Chicago. And after getting here, the only thing they really missed was CYT. Their kids had participated in Chicago. And so she and I contacted CYT in San Diego to find out what would we need to do to start an expansion branch here in Kansas City. It was a steep learning curve.
There was a family at our first parent information night, Kevin and Gina Milbourn, who then joined us in helping to start CYT. We had our first summer camp in the summer of 2000. And to our shock and amazement we had 75 kids! So we had auditions, had our first set of classes, and our first show was Little House on the Prairie.
You know it was it was a lot of fun but it was so much work. We were all learning for the first time. We’re working with teachers and directors and parents that none of us knew [what we were doing]. So, we’re all kind of getting to know one another. Finally it’s dress
rehearsal week when we got a cease and desist letter from the lawyers from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s estate telling us “No this is not copyrighted. You cannot perform this show.”
So the lawyers in San Diego called the lawyers of Laura Ingalls Wilder estate and told them our whole story and said “We’re so sorry We didn’t know it wasn’t public domain but these kids have practiced for weeks This is their show week can they please do the show and the lawyers agreed that we could perform that last show if CYT promised never to do Little House on the Prairie again So our first show Little House on the Prairie was the final time that CYT ever performed that show.”
