Why every adult should go to theater camp at least once.
If I could go back in time and ask my seventeen-year-old self “where will you be at 30?” the answer would be very quick, dry-cut and simple. “I’ll be on Broadway” was essentially my response for every question, inquiry, or thought about the future. Having solidified myself as a true thespian and having attended Union High School, one of the states most competitive theater programs, I was sure that by the big 30 that I would have a couple of broadway credits under my belt. That was sarcasm, sorta.
So now, at 30, it is with a great sense of irony that I am sitting in a large wooden cabin overlooking a lake in the middle of the woods. I’m not performing on Broadway tonight. Instead, I am seated in the shade trying not to melt into hot chocolate. In between sips of lemonade I watch children singing scales around a keyboard, outside boys are playing hot potato with the frogs and on the other side of the lake a choreographer is teaching a combination to a song from Heathers the musical.
It’s not Broadway but it is the third year of Vanguard Theater Company’s Summer Theater Camp. What started as a theater day camp at a school has grown into a full summer theater festival complete with productions, training, workshops, a repertory performance schedule, over sixty young actors, three production teams, and a dozen camp counselors. In twenty days, we go from page to stage, from concept to production and from mere strangers to friends.
I arrived three days before the first camper arrived to lay my stake as the director/choreographer of this years production of 13 the musical. My first order of business was to clean my cabin and to meet the staff and team. Humidity sat on my neck like one of those circular pillows that you by from 7–11 as I trekked up a hill to find my co-founder cabin. After settling in, and helping my production team to settle in we began to plan and prepare.
Once, I got over my initial fear of the jumping spiders, the rattlesnakes that sunbathe on the rocks and the “bear safety” training I began to settle into the woods nicely.
My best friend and associate director Justin plugged up his bluetooth speaker and we jammed to the POSE tv series playlist as we planned our rehearsals and staging concepts. The mountain breeze that danced through the cabin was indescribable. Cellphone service? nonexistant. One night it rained so hard that all you could see for miles was a mist in the air. So cool.
The first night the kids arrived I saw a blue-tailed skink slither underneath a rock. The next day, while kids belted out the opening number I saw two dragonflies jumping each other’s bones. At night, the campfire’s smoke and children’s laughter fill the night sky which is blanketed by stars and the most captivating hue of midnight purple.
As if the nature is not enough there are the moments: the opportunities to witness a kids confidence blossom, or watch them conquer their fear of thunder in an outside rehearsal or to see the way the boys sit up when they realize that their choreographers are proud members of the #boyswhodance movement.
Then, there are the adults, all of us from different backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different colors and different teaching philosophies. Everyone is constantly learning, growing, challenging and being challenged. The camp works at its best when collaboration, creativity and community commune.
In simplest form: If you can make it through a summer in a theater camp you can make it anywhere.
I think every adult in the world should go to theater camp at least once. Every member of government should be required to attend theater camp as an adult. Not just because the arts teach us how to project, enunciate, speak clearly, and think critically — because they do. But also, because there’s no way you can produce all these shows, with all these moving parts without working together, without collaborating, without sharing solutions, and set pieces and props. There is no way you can get through theater camp without confronting at least a few of your biases or privileges.
Every adult should go to theater camp, or work at a theater camp, because theater camps, much like the arts, teach us so much about others and so much more about ourselves. If there’s one thing that’s missing from adults today — it’s the ability to be self-aware without being self-centric. The balance of leading and listening. The space between doing the most and doing too much. We learn these things and so much more in the arts.
I’m not on Broadway (yet) like I imagined I would be, but I am living centerstage doing purpose driven work that is important and fulfilling. It is the work of service, of keeping an important tradition alive in a world of Trumpism and deep cuts in the arts. It is the work of teaching our future leaders how to listen, how to respond, and how to make moves that are meaningful.
And that, to me, is worth a standing ovation of its own.
Edited by Chloe Catoya
