Molly Gordon and Ben Platt met when they were children. Adderley School, a Los Angeles theater studio that runs after-school programs and summer day camps. There are photographs and home videos of the two starring face-to-face on very adult shows such as “Chicago” and “Dumb Yankees.” Twenty years later, with the help of Pratt’s fiancée, actor-writer Noah Galvin, and writer-director Nick Lieberman, they’ve turned erratic vibrato, stumbling choreography, and a fervor into feature-length comedy. I spun memories of a sense of belonging. “Theater Camp” Opening Friday.
Set in the financially precarious establishment of this title, the film follows campers and counselors in upstate New York working on ambitious productions like “Cats,” “Dumb Yankees,” and “Crucible Jr.” bounce between And “Joanne Still” is an original musical inspired by the camp’s comatose founder (Amy Sedaris). The film started out as a short in 2017, and after a year of fundraising struggles (“I wanted to improvise with the kids, a lot of people weren’t into it,” Gordon said), It was taken last summer, 2019. Frenzy days in an abandoned Jewish concentration camp in Warwick, New York
The film is full of insider jokes (campers bartering for bags of Throat Coat tea as if they were Schedule I drugs) and all that finally came to be accepted on the kick line. It is also a hymn to the outcasts and the angular. Theater camp, as described in the final ballad, is “where the last-chosen kids at the gym end up forming a team.”
Over the years, theater camps across the country have produced many Broadway stars, composers and directors. The filmmakers and several Broadway veterans who say camp helped shape their careers spoke to me about community, kissing on stage, and the transformative effect of “Free to Be You and Me.” rice field. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Molly Gordon
Actress (Booksmart, The Bear)
camp: Adderley School, French Woods, stage door manners
memory: In sleepover camp, I never got to lead. I was always in the chorus of “Zombie Prom,” “West Side Story,” and “Chicago.” But I really loved it. A classic experience. I could eat as much sugar as I wanted. I decided to appear in a program that was completely inappropriate for my age. The next day, when I kissed two men, they told me they were gay. I was just a crazy wild child, so I was super excited to be in that environment.
Ben Pratt
Actor (“Parade”, “Dear Evan Hansen”)
camp: Adderley School
memory: have independence. You have to risk being forcibly separated from your parents and ashamed of yourself. Throw yourself into things and flip over. It’s a healthy failure. For queer kids like me, it was a place where I was most fully accepted, without having to fit in or pretend I enjoyed certain things. At Adderley day camp, Molly and I were like Adelaide and Skye in Guys and Dolls. We were Laura and Joe from the “Dumb Yankees”. We were Roxy and Billy Flynn from Chicago. We were Tracy and Link from “Hairspray.” I was just the weirdest Link Larkin. Molly, one of her first kisses was our kiss in it.
Noah Galvin
Actor (“The Good Doctor”, “Dear Evan Hansen”)
camp: Northern Westchester Center for the Arts
memory: My first play was Charlotte’s Web. My mother told me a very disturbing story about when I went on stage as Gander with the script in hand. I was worried that I might forget my lines. “I don’t know if he’s right for the job,” she said. However, it teaches us independence as young people. It gives you true independence, both emotionally and physically. There were children of all shapes and sizes and gender expressions. In one space, there were 120 of her like-minded people, all of whom wanted to do “anything goes.”
Jason Robert Brown
Composer (“Parade”, “13”)
camp: French Woods
memory: I entered the school thinking I was an actor, but I was also in a rock band and a jazz band. Luckily, the actor guy is gone. I was Pirelli in Sweeney Todd and Charlie in Maryly We Roll Along. I sang “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” in Cabaret in a role I really shouldn’t have done. I was able to see the whole world of this work. I’m not a happy ending person. Also, if you can only watch the most popular shows, you might feel like that’s all there is to it. Getting to do all this material that was darker than that, weirder than that got me to say, “Oh, there’s a place for what I want to do.”
Andrea Burns
Actress (“In the Heights”)
camp: French Woods
memory: It was a miracle. In my school, I was the only one who really liked theater. Going to this wonderland and meeting other kids who love this world as much as I do gave me a real sense of belonging. That same summer she played Sally Bowles in Cabaret and Aldonza in Don Quixote. I was 14 and we were talking about sleeping while singing “The Prostitute Aldonza”. The way we cheered each other on was such a fun experience. A colleague’s gift inspired me to try harder. I found true happiness in that atmosphere of cooperation and growth. I’ve been chasing that feeling all my professional life, to be honest.
Celia Keenan Bolger
Actress (“To Kill a Mockingbird”)
camp: Interlochen Arts Camp
memory: I felt like I was lost in a magical world. We were all talking about what our favorite Sondheim musicals were, not what was on the radio. It’s that sense of belonging that keeps me in the theater for so long. I felt most like myself when I was in camp. This desire to do musicals always felt peculiar and a little lonely growing up, but with all these people who are so talented and love musicals as much as I do, what an amazing experience. It clicked into place. Camp made me feel like, “Oh, this could be my profession.”
Rachel Chavkin
Director (“Thanksgiving Play”, “Hadestown”)
camp: stage door manners
memory: I played a nun in “The Cell” who kills birds and/or children. I played “Playing for Time” by Arthur Miller.starred in “No mercy!” And the evil mother of “Blood Brothers”. When I did “Our Town,” I played the stage manager. The great depth of Stagedoor is that it was filled with homeschooled, marginalized people. It was heaven for queerness of all kinds. And as ambiguous as I am about the odd status game on Stagedoor, without it I wouldn’t be in theater. It nurtured my curiosity. And it started teaching me about taste. When I went to college a year after quitting Stage Door and saw my first Wooster Group show, I thought, ‘I don’t want to see musicals ever again.
Janine Tesori
Composer (“Kimberly Akimbo”, “Fun Home”)
camp: stage door manners
memory: I didn’t even know what theater was until I was 18. But for me it all started at the stage door. I was also a music director and counselor. He was the music director for “Free to Be You and Me”. A friend of mine was directing it and she wanted new material and that was the first song I wrote. I immediately thought, “Oh, that’s what I’m missing.” At that point, I was still a medical major at Barnard College. After that summer, I majored in music at Columbia University. Thanks to Stagedoor, we were able to do that. It was just a ticket to another world.
