With Jane Baker

1 Week
Monday-Friday Half Days: 9-12

Spend 5 half days exploring skills that will serve you your whole life, in or out of the theater: thinking on your feet, working collaboratively, keeping focus, and having fun! The best part is that in the learning of these things we also have a great time! We will explore traditional theater games as well as short form, long form, and structured improvisations. Come play!

Directors: Shannon Ward and Hayden Bunker

2 Weeks
June 23 - June 27, Monday - Friday: 9-3:30
June 30 - July 3, Monday - Thursday 9-3:30

No Camp July 4th

3 Performances: Thursday, July 3rd at 7pm, Saturday July 5th at 2pm & 7pm

NEYT’s most popular summer program brings the merriment and madness! 

Playing heroes, villains, and fools, participants learn character development by making big, bold, loud, silly choices. Colorful costumes, shaving cream fights, and slapstick comedy are melodrama’s stock-in-trade. Through theater games, improv exercises, and clowning, students develop the vocal and physical skills to pull off the over-the-top action and comedic timing. Student-driven ideas are encouraged, and directors strive to incorporate them into the production. At the end of two weeks, students perform before enthusiastic audience members, who cheer on the actors in the boisterous, interactive tradition of melodrama.

Directed by Dory Hamm
2 weeks
Monday - Friday: 9-3:30pm
2 Performances: August 22nd, Friday, 5pm and August 23rd, Saturday, 5pm

Enjoy two wild and wonderful weeks exploring clowning and physical comedy! Tailored to the unique talents and interests of the students, this program develops original clowning ‘bits,’ which are worked up into short performable scenes. Come play in the clown zone!

With Kelindah Schuster
2 Weeks
Monday - Friday: 9-3:30
2 Performances: Friday, July 18th, 7pm and Saturday, July 19th,  7pm

In this camp we will each devise a character from the inside out, allowing for discovery about who we are and what stories we want to tell. Drag is another tool to add to the toolbox every versatile performer needs. When getting the chance to play with gender, it’s possible to learn about the stereotypes that exist and how we can blend and blur the lines to create work that is both entertaining and powerful.

In this program you will:

• Create a character

• Develop a concept for an act

• Create a costume and makeup for your character/act

• Stage the concept

• Incorporate lighting and sound, props and other set elements

• Collaborate with other performers to clarify each story

• Learn about building a show arc

With Nick Bombicino
2 Weeks
Monday - Friday:  9-3:30
Do you want to build your musical theater skills? In this camp we’ll explore the basic techniques in musical theatre training: singing, dancing, acting, and putting it all together, including duets! Audition technique, acting the song, and creating compelling characters that move smoothly from scene to song will all be explored through songs, dances, and scenes. All experience levels are welcome, as the camp will be tailored to each student’s level of training and experience. We’ll end with a Family Sharing, giving campers a chance to show off what they’ve learned. Join us!

Recommended for campers with a true interest in musical theater and a desire to level up their skills.

Directed by Rebecca Waxman with Keely Eastley
Assistant Director Amy Majer
3 Weeks
No Camp July 4th
Monday - Friday: 9am-4pm
3 Performances: Friday, July 11th, 7pm, Saturday, July 12th, 2pm & 7pm

Please review the Audition Materials

This program offers a more intensive and rigorous theatre experience for our senior company students. This is a three-week immersion program exploring a literary classic. Participants ages 13-19 are given the support they need to develop their skill with language, voice, and physical story-telling as they rehearse a fully produced play. This is a challenging and fun experience under the guidance of professional practitioners.

Twelfth Night

A ship is wrecked on the rocks. Viola is washed ashore but her twin brother Sebastian is lost. Determined to survive on her own, she steps out to explore a new land. So begins a whirlwind of mistaken identity and unrequited love. Join us for a high-spirited romp, set among a bright world of yachts, disguises, 80’s radio, flip-flops, extended pranks and fruity drinks!

Directed by Gavy Kessler 
Music Director Graham Christian

3.5 Weeks
Monday - Friday: 9am-4pm
6 Performances: Friday, August 8th, 7pm, Saturday, August 9th, 2pm & 7pm, Friday, August 15th, 7pm, Saturday, August 16th, 2pm & 7pm

Audition Dates: May 7th, Wednesday, from 4-6pm and May 10th, Saturday, from 10am-12pm

This program offers a more intensive and rigorous musical theatre experience for our senior company students. This summer, participants will learn, rehearsal, and perform a complete musical, with the support needed to develop vocal, dance, and acting skills. Students of all abilities are welcome.

Chicago Teen Edition

It's the 1920s in the Windy City, and two would-be jazz starlets Velma and Roxie vie for fame, fortune and notoriety-- all while on trial for killing their husbands. Can legendary lawyer Billy Flynn keep these "merry murderesses" out of the hangman's noose by controlling the narrative around their crimes?

Written by Rosa Palmeri and Directed by Rosa Palmeri & Shannon Ward

2 weeks of rehearsals

Monday-Friday: 9am - 4pm
3 Performances at end of camp, Aug 22 at 7pm, Aug 23 at 2pm and 7pm
Show tours area schools in September/October (4 - 6 performances)

Commedia is back!
This original commedia-style play will delight actors and audiences with heightened language, physical hijinks, and stage magic.

Commedia dell'arte is an early theatrical form, originating in 15th century Italy, that still influences comedy today. Actors would play stock characters such as foolish old men, devious servants, starry-eyed young lovers, or falsely heroic soldiers and then improvise around a basic plot. Our version will be updated for modern audiences; we’ll use larger than life costumes and physicality to convey the hilariously dramatic inner lives of these roles, and base our script on a classic text written by a playwright like Moliere or Pirandello who favored elevated language mixed with sensational comedic shenanigans.

Together we will build "lazzi", or physical, comedic routines, to be woven through a highly rhythmic, fast-paced, half-hour script. Each part will be tailored to stretch the actor's comedic skills and help them to command the stage in a whole new way. Think dancing, music, chase scenes, dramatic deaths, and more!

After opening at NEYT, we will tour the play to local schools in the fall.