Exclusive: Broadway Stars Share Childhood Photos From Their Summers at Stagedoor Manor

Going to Stagedoor Manor is not like any other summer spent at sleepaway camp — it’s an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience. 

Some of Broadway’s biggest stars attended the performing arts program in Loch Sheldrake, New York, long before they graced the Great White Way. And now a handful of them are reuniting on Monday, September 28, at Town Hall to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the beloved theater camp. 

“My memories of Stagedoor are really, really filled with the first time I felt understood,” actor and alum Erich Bergen, whose 6W Entertainment is a producer on the one-night-only concert, exclusively tells BroadwayWorld. 

“I walked onto campus,” he recalls, “and I discovered 300 other ‘me’s.” 

That’s how many of the Broadway alumni feel about the theater camp — and they’ll share more about their adventures on Monday night. 

“There’s a lot of performers who are performing songs, choreography, lyrics that they haven’t touched in decades,” Bergen promises, explaining that the special event is a “fully staged, fully produced concert of incredible stories and incredible music — and some hilarious photos with really bad hairstyles from the 80s!” 

The evening is scheduled to feature appearances by Bergen as well as Michael Ian Black, Zach Braff, Josh Charles, Jon Cryer, Sofia Hublitz, Shawn Levy, Julia Murney, Chris Olsen, Larry Owens, Adam Pascal, Amy Ryan, Shaina Taub, Jeanine Tesori and more. Some famous faces, like Skylar Astin, will even be making virtual appearances. 

“I spent eight summers at Stagedoor, so it’s hard to separate the person and artist I became from that place,” Taub tells BroadwayWorld. “To come back for its 50th anniversary and be surrounded by people who understand exactly what those summers meant feels incredibly special.” 

The iconic “Our Time Cabaret,” an annual tradition for campers, will be “the centerpiece” of the evening, Bergen teases. 

While Bergen says that Stagedoor could be filled with “hardcore, intense training on developing skills that I still use to this day,” it is also a place that many future Broadway stars get on stage for the very first time. 

For the Boop! The Musical actor, he’ll never forget the time he stopped the show — literally. 

“We were doing Anything Goes, and we were using a real dog for one of the scenes that needed a dog, and I went off stage, and the dog was supposed to be in his little box, and he wasn’t,” Bergen explains. 

“The door had swung open, and I thought the dog got out,” he says. “So instead of coming up with improving a fix and just going on with it, I walked on stage and stopped the show, and the director started screaming at me from the back of the house, and that’s when I learned you find a way to continue on!” 

“Stagedoor was everything to me,” he says.

More stories like Bergen’s will be told when the Stagedoor one-night-only concert takes place Monday, September 28, at 7 p.m. at The Town Hall. 

See more photos of Stagedoor Manor alumni below:

Ansel Elgort

Chris Olsen

Erich Bergen

Jon Cryer

Josh Charles

Julia Murney

Larry Owens

Mandy Moore

Natalie Portman and Bryce Dallas Howard

Nicholas Christopher

Robert Downey Jr.

Sebastian Stan

Seth Herzog

Shaina Taub

Shawn Levy

Skylar Astin

Zach Braff