Confessions of a Coffeehouse Groupie By PJ Macari

Former MYP Team Member PJ Macari wrote this letter in 2018 originally. Since so many people miss the MYP   Coffeehouses, he thought it would be fun to reprint it currently. Enjoy!

When the MYP had the first Coffee House in 1990, I was no longer a teen in the Program but someone forgot to tell me that. I went to all of the rehearsals and practices and even wore the white shirt at the show, although I was sitting in the audience using a friend’s video camera filming the show. The first Coffee House was an event and many of the performances are legend now. I was just happy to be there.  And not in the show.

I didn’t attend the next 3 Coffee Houses but returned for the 5th in 1995. As a new Team Member I was happy to do anything needed. I helped sell tickets, decorate the room, organize the desserts and finally, be in the actual show. Jerry Maggio was recruiting background T-Birds for “Summer Nights” from Grease that he and Andrea DiBello were going to perform together so Tommy Leavens, John Fodera and I came up on stage. The theater nerd I am now could not more embarrassed that I forgot all of the lines and in our big moment, I fell backwards and almost off of the stage. It’s on the video, to be rewound again and again. I limped off of the stage, never to return.  My performing days were over.

Or so I thought. A couple of years later, Eileen Haggarty decided to stage a number from The Brady Bunch and needed the six Brady kids and I was in the wrong place at the right time. It was then I learned I didn’t know my left from my right and although we survived the number, I again swore to never do this again. I was happy being the utility player in a bigger game. Need to run to Party City two hours before the show with Amy Toskas to find colored paper for a decoration, I’m your man. Run the leftover cookies and cakes from the back of St. Mel’s to the front for the end of show sell off, sign me up. Take pictures from every show from the fifth until the latest? It would be my honor. 

My favorite job was my own sort of entertainment. Keeping the teens who were not performing awake and get them involved in the show until it was time to serve coffee and cookies was fun. Starting a clap during a song or run a conga line through the audience was never a problem for me. In one year, I noticed that about half of the teens disappeared after a break and were nowhere to be found. Diving into the bowels of St. Mel’s, they were finally found in a tiny, tiny closet. Never sure what they were doing in there, but there were an odd number of teens who came out of that closet like a clown car. 

Over the years I have seen wonderful performances from teens who were brave enough to get up in front of room of mostly strangers and share their talents. Team Members and Alumni singing and dancing their hearts out. Stephanie Getejanc becoming Evita. Anthony & David & Brian & Stephen were The Blues Brothers. Rich and Andy in their German dancing outfits. Michelle Merring and later her sister Irene, huge stars. Gary, continuing to amaze me. Andrea, always timid to begin and then blowing the doors off of the place every time. The Joe Roach sing-a-longs. And, of course, Doris. So so many people, braver than I ever was. And always ending the way it should, with You’ve Got a Friend. 

I have been blessed to attend almost of the Coffee Houses over the years and while the space and size may have changed, it is always the same warm place to come to and see old friends, meet teen’s parents and families and to hear an amazing band perform miracles with little practice time. To catch up with Eileen and Barbara in the kitchen or to see what raffles Deirdre and Jen came up with or try the desert donations from Fodera Foods. I will bring my sons this year to their first Coffee House. Before they were born, we told our friends we were expecting twins at that year’s Coffee House. They were the youngest attendees to the 40th Anniversary Celebration and they are much bigger now. I don’t think we will last the whole show but we will be there. And I hope to see you too.