“Coffee has become my best friend,” says Kacy Tiller, who has been performing as Titania in “Robin Goodfellow” each morning and portraying eight characters each night in rehearsals for “The Dining Room.””I’m just being a sponge,” says Tiller, 20, an apprentice in the new East Tennessee Repertory Theatre (ETRT) company through the Professional Theatre Experience class at ETSU. “I take all these notes and really listen then go home and study them. I go home late and work hard on something I need to bring to the stage the next day. If I need to, I get up at 4:30 in the morning and go over it again.

“I want to learn and I like being professional in what I do,” says Tiller, who is commuting to and from Bristol for the experience. “I do what they tell me and if they say step up, I step up. I’ll come back the next day with it fixed. If they ask me to stay after, I do. With every step, I learn something new.”

Part of the coursework of this first-time ETSU course, taught by Actors’ Equity members Pat Cronin, Herb Parker and Elizabeth Sloan under the artistic direction of ETSU theatre professor Bobby Funk, is two stage productions in three weeks. Robin Goodfellow, a condensed young person’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, concluded a week of performances last Friday. On Aug. 19, “The Dining Room” opened at ETSU’s Bud Frank Theatre for a two-weekend run.

In A.R. Gurney’s “Dining Room,” Tiller portrays daughters from tyke to teen, a maid (twice) and a graduate student, as well as the wife of a perfectionistic, demanding husband, played by Equity actor and film producer Doug Reiser.

“At first it was intimidating working with all the professionals, but the more we rehearsed, the more things clicked,” Tiller says. “It’s so much fun and I’m learning as I go along. I go to rehearsals even though I’m not called.”

At 20, Tiller, although just beginning her career in theater, already has the team spirit, as well as the work ethic of a pro, say Northeast State theatre instructor Sloan and Funk.

“One of the highlights of this summer experience with the newly formed ETRT has been getting to know Kacy,” says Sloan, a professional actor who is portraying six characters herself in “The Dining Room.” “She is a great person, a great student, and a great actor. She has grown every day. Really. Every day. She must go home and work like crazy. Every day she brings something new to rehearsal.

“I think her work as Titania has been a joy and the multiple roles she is playing are wonderful. She does not seem afraid to try new things on stage and that was something I could not do when I was her age. “

Funk, too, sees evidence of those late nights with large doses of coffee. “I’ve worked with a lot of young actors and I’d have to rank Kacy at the top in terms of work ethic and maturity,” says Funk, who is directing “The Dining Room.” “You give her a note and she takes it, thinks about it and the next time she’s in rehearsal, she applies it.

“Most young actors are leery of applying it. She’s not. She’s bold. She has a quest for knowledge, which some young people don’t have. A lot of young people talk about it, but they don’t really do it.”

“Bold” is an interesting choice of adjectives for Tiller, who in elementary school was held back a year because of her shyness and lack of communication. “The drama club at [Sullivan] Central changed my life,” says Tiller, who graduated in 2009 from Sullivan Central High School in Blountville. “It helped me back out of the shyness. Ms. [Kelly] Kendrick let me be Little Red in Into the Woods and it just clicked. This is what I want to do.

“My parents keep saying again and again when they see my performances, ‘Wow. She would never talk.’ I felt like all the pressure from all my life just fell away when I stepped on stage. I had defeated something.”

Definitively portraying eight characters in one show is a challenge for any actor, Funk says. “But she really brings all her characters in ‘The Dining Room’ to life,” he says. “Each character is distinct and different. She wants to bring truth to it. She’s not going to do the cliché or if she does, she will find some truth in the cliché.”

Tiller is seeking truth in many genres of acting, she says, whether it’s stage, TV, film or voicing. Vintage comedy is one of her new passions and fields of dreams.

“She came to me and said she wanted to watch old movies, comedies to learn the techniques,” Funk says. “I recommend some Marx Brothers and Lucille Ball . She’s researched this stuff so she can learn from these masters – not Jim Carrey, but Groucho Marx, Buster Keaton. Most students in a class when you mention Buster Keaton don’t have any idea who he is. It’s heart-warming. And I know she’ll find ways to use these techniques in her acting.”

So at night, after she’s performed “Goodfellow” in the morning, rehearsed “Dining Room” all evening, and gone over her director’s notes, Tiller sits at home and soaks in comedy.

As well as vintage comedy, Tiller also expresses herself through vintage attire, sporting a different hat each day and lots of color, sparkle and panache in her choice of pants, vests and jackets, especially. “I like to be incredibly goofy,” she says. “I’ll be walking down the street and I get weird looks. But I am out of the shell now. This is me. I’m just wearing my personality on the outside.”

That true Kacy is already making a difference in the theatre company and on her theatre mentors and teachers in the Tri-Cities. “I’ve talked with Elizabeth and Pat, and we would have no trouble at all recommending her to any professional company as an apprentice,” Funk says. “She’s just that kind of person that a company would want. No duty is too small, never a complaint and she’s talented. That combination is hard to find.

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