Before They Were Broadway Stars, This Is What Their Life Was Like at Theater Camp
Theater camps like Stagedoor Manor and French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts have some incredibly famous alumni.
If you’ve ever seen the 2003 film Camp or the 2023 movie Theater Camp, you know just how serious theater kids are when it comes to their summers at sleep-away camp.
Even the biggest Broadway stars grew up just like every other adolescent at places like Stagedoor Manor in Loch Sheldrake, New York, and French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts in Hancock.
Both camps are known for their A-list alumni, including Natalie Portman, Sebastian Stan, Robert Downey Jr., Mandy Moore, Zach Braff and many, many more.
BroadwayWorld looks at a handful of former campers who eventually made their way to Broadway and what their time was like doing theater in the Catskills as a child.
Todd Graff
The actor and filmmaker loved his time at Stagedoor Manor so much, it inspired the 2003 film Camp, starring a young Anna Kendrick, Robin de Jesús and Sasha Allen, about a group of theater-obsessed kids who spend their summer doing whatever it takes to land the roles of their dreams at Camp Ovation. “It absolutely saved my life, going to Stagedoor Manor,” Graff, who wrote and directed the film, told CBS’ The Early Show in 2003 around the time of the film’s release. “I was a kid who was on not a great road, and it took me about 15 minutes of being here to have found a completely other way of looking at myself.”
Lea Michele
The Glee star is one of the most notable alum from Stagedoor Manor, though she’s the first to admit that — unlike Rachel Berry — she never had a star turn during her summers there. “I never had a lead at Stagedoor,” Michele said in the book Theater Geek by Mickey Rapkin. “I was in a revue, Side by Side by Sondheim. I also sang the ‘Pinball Wizard’ solo in Tommy. My last summer, I was supposed to be one of the friends in Sweet Charity, but I left to do a workshop of Spring Awakening in New York.” Michele was cast as Wendla in the rock musical by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, originating the role in early workshops before she went with the show to Broadway. “It was a real job,” Michele, who was most recently seen on Broadway in Chess, explained in Theater Geek. “I made money. And I got to play the lead.”
Adam Pascal
Pascal was just a young kid when he attended Stagedoor, and he’s not afraid to admit that he missed his parents while he was gone for the summer. “Yes, I did cry a lot,” he said during an interview on Sheila Watko’s YouTube channel. “I think I was 7 years old, and I was the youngest kid in the camp. And yes, I cried from the moment I got there because I was homesick.” However, the counselors soon learned how to put Pascal at ease. “They figured out that the only way to stop me from crying was to keep me busy,” he explained. “So they just kept putting me in shows. The most interesting role that I had when I was there was in Cabaret, and I got to sing ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me.’” Pascal, who was Tony-nominated for his portrayal of Roger in Rent, went on to have a long career in the theater — and got to play the Master of Ceremonies in the 1998 Broadway revival of the John Kander and Fred Ebb musical. “[I got to] sing that song for real as the actual character in a full-blown Broadway production, which is a very full-circle moment,” he said.
Skylar Astin
Though the Pitch Perfect actor didn’t attend Stagedoor with his former Spring Awakening costar Michele, he still has some fond memories of his time spent at theater camp. “It was very moving and influential on my life,” he said in a 2015 interview. “I did an acting class there, and the teacher made us sit in a circle, and one person at a time would go in the center of the circle, and everyone would tell them five wonderful things about them and five things they could work on. Not even really as an actor, just as a human being, it was intense to have your peers do that. But, I remember it changed my life. I was weeping, and it was so sad, but beautiful, but there was so much care in the exercise. It changed me as a person and as an actor. I’ll never forget it.”
Beanie Feldstein
The former Funny Girl star loves Stagedoor Manor so much, she’s even returned a few times to see the next generation of theater stars and theater makers in their element. “Laughing because every kid at stagedoor manor is more talented, kind and bright than we will ever be!!!” she captioned an Instagram photo of herself with Ben Platt and director-producer Adam Quinn back at Stagedoor. “What a magical day!!” A young Feldstein was even interviewed for a CBS Sunday Morning segment when she was a camper at Stagedoor. The only hard part about camp, Feldstein said at the time, was giving up your cell phone upon arrival — but only because “you can't call your parents right when you get your part.” Other than that, she said, “I don’t need to talk to my friends; all my friends are here.”
Melissa Errico
The Tony nominee has said that her “career” began “when my mother signed me up for French Woods camp.” The French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts alum revealed in a Medium interview with Diane Strand that she “played Evita opposite Jason Robert Brown as Che” in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, among many other roles at the camp. “Yes, I was 13, and made a very determined musical theater fascist. I also got to play all the sexy comedy roles — from Adelaide to Carla in Nine, and Hedy La Rue in How to Succeed,” she said. “I was a natural clown.”
David Stone
Before he produced the megahit musical Wicked, Stone was just another kid at theater camp. “I started really young,” he recalled during an episode of The Producer's Perspective podcast with Ken Davenport. “I knew then that this was my group, this was my tribe; this was who I needed to be with.” Stone, who went to French Woods with songwriter Jason Robert Brown, said his strength in the theater business comes from the friends he made along the way who “lifted me up and moved me forward.” He added, “I am so lucky that I got to grow up in this community.”
Jon Cryer
Long before Cryer starred on Two and a Half Men, he was just another camper at Stagedoor. The Spelling Bee actor discussed the experience with fellow alum Zach Braff during a 2024 episode of the Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald podcast. “When I was like 12, I did a school play or something, and then a friend of mine was going to Stagedoor Manor, and I said, ‘There’s a camp where they teach this? This is amazing!’ I had heard for years the bus ride up to Stagedoor Manor is legendary because it’s where all the old kids and the newbs just do this crazy musical theater singalong for about three hours that is so intense that it has become legend.” Though Cryer admitted he never took the bus ride there because his mother drove him to camp, he explained, “If you haven’t memorized songs that were cut from Dreamgirls out of town, then you are toast on this bus ride!”
Zach Braff
During the same podcast episode of Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald, cohost Braff explained what it was like going to Stagedoor as a heterosexual male. After Cryer noted that the “girls to boys ratio was ridiculous” there, given the amount of young girls who are passionate about theater, the former Bullets Over Broadway star said there were also “a lot of young boys who already knew that they were gay.” Therefore, the Scrubs actor said, “If you were straight, and you were there, you were kind of like Fonzie [from Happy Days].” Braff added, “Forget lacrosse and football! If you could sing and turn a joke, you were the coolest. … When I told my father I was going — and don't get me wrong, he was very supportive of theater — but he read about the camp, and he’s like, ‘Well, I guess you don’t need to bring a mit.’”
Jason Robert Brown
Attending French Woods helped Brown make the decision to become a theatrical songwriter. The Tony Award winner, who has returned to French Woods to work with up-and-coming students, said in a 2014 interview with The Forward that growing up, he not only enjoyed music, he was also “something of a ham.” According to Brown, “When I was about 11, my mother was trying to figure out what to do with me. She sent me to the French Woods Performing Arts camp where I auditioned for musicals. At the time, it was a toss up whether I was going to be an actor or a piano player. After many summers at French Woods exploring that [acting] side of who I was, I realized I enjoyed the theater of it, I enjoyed being around actors, but, at the end of the day, I didn’t entirely feel I was one. I felt entirely more comfortable with the musicians. But the actors were so much fun I didn’t want to stop hanging around them, so I decided to write for theater.”
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