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marigoldmusical · 1 year ago

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How to run a youth musical theatre camp when you have no idea what you're doing and also no money

Hello! My name is Z. Nice to meet ya. I am a composer, playwright, and overall nerd about music and theatre. I recently ran a kid's musical theatre camp completely from scratch. And I mean completely. And I learned a lot. For my Gold Award, I need a "Global Link" and a level of sustainability to my project. I couldn't make it sustainable in my own community, so hey! How about I make it more sustainable... across the globe! By making information about how to run a project like this more accessible, and laid out step by step.

On my blog will also be a PDF of the musical I wrote for this project, as well as links to all the music for it. They are free to use for whatever projects you so desire. I don't have any need to profit off this musical.

Let's get started, shall we?

General table of contents: 1. Starting questions to ask yourself 2. Where to get money??? 3. What show to do?? 4. Location??? 5. How do I teach a show? 6. Set and other tech stuff 7. Getting people to sign up 8. Final thoughts

Starting questions

So, you want to run a musical theatre camp. Good starting point, but that's not enough to make much progress. There's a few things you need to figure out before you can tackle anything else.

In no particular order:

How long will this camp be, and when, and what time?

A week? 3 days? 1 day? 3 weeks? 2 months? Will it be during the summer? The school year? Winter break? What specific dates? Will the camp run all day? Just afternoons? Just mornings? Overnight stay? The answer to these things changes a LOT.

The less time you meet, the less you will be able to do. And the shorter and less complex your show must be. You must also consider when your target demographic will be free. I nailed down my dates for my camp a year in advance. I was able to not only be sure I was finished by the date I set, but think hard about what dates were best. Generally, for kids, a summer camp is best. Times are important, too. Mostly for parents. If it starts in the middle of the day, a lot of kids won't be able to make it since their parents work. Do whatever works for you and your plan, but these are important things to consider.

2. What ages/grades will you consider?

This is a hard one. My target demographic was ages in my community without access to theatre, so this question was easy for me, but it may be less so for others. I'd suggest not going any younger than 3rd graders, but that's absolutely not a hard and fast rule.

One important thing to consider is, if you have a wide age gap, the older kids having less respect for the younger ones and working with them less. This happened in my camp. It caused some big problems the first few days.

The older the kids, the less one-on-one guidance they will typically need, but that doesn't apply for everyone. Just a general theme.

If you work with teenagers, you also need to consider a lot of us work summer jobs.

3. Who will you have to help you? And can you pay them?

Please, have at LEAST two people helping. Even if one of those people sits and does nothing most of the time. You cannot handle it alone.

If you can only get that minimum, that's alright. However, it does change the ages you can work with and the number of people you can have (see number 4). A large camp requires a pretty large staff.

The payment question may not be answerable for a while, but keep it in mind.

4. How many students do you want to work with?

This question relates a lot to what show you want to do. Bigger shows require bigger casts, and vice versa. The more students you have, the more people teaching you need

Will you have a cutoff where you'll start turning people away, or will you take everyone who wants to join? Will it be okay if there is a large number of ensemble characters? Once you have your show decided, you need to come up with a minimum number of students. Any less than that number, and the show can't really function.

5. Can you feed the students meals?

If this is a yes, you have a LOT more money and planning needed. Feeding a lot of kids lunch and/or dinner every day is not cheap or easy. You'll need a plan for each day and people to make the meals. I didn't do this for my camp, so I can't say how much it would cost per kid per day, but I can tell you it's a lot.

These questions are pretty complicated, as they have layers upon layers of questions within them, but without them, your camp will have no legs to stand on.

I decided for my camp to do a 5 day camp from Tuesday-Saturday during late June of 2023. I would accept kids going into the 3rd grade all the way through kids going through the 7th grade. I would get some of my friends and family to help run the camp, but I wouldn't need a large number, because I was going to run a small show, with only a small group of kids. I didn't know the specifics for some of it, but I had a great starting point.

Where to get money?

A tough, tough question. But don't freak out. My camp ended up costing me about $250, which is INCREDIBLY cheap. I found ways to cut costs all over the place. I ended up collecting about twice that in funds and donated the excess to my local high school theatre program.

I was lucky enough to have my Gold Award as a source of funding itself. My troop gave me $250 from our savings under the condition that I kept good track of all the money I spent. Which I had to do for my Gold Award anyway, so. I also collected direct donations from people who came to the show, and I asked the parents if they'd pay a $25 fee if they could. It was entirely optional if it wasn't within their means.

I recommend not having a fully required cost for parents. Something that should be given if they can, but if they can't, its no big deal! Frame this as financial aid. That is what it is, in the end.

Here are a couple of ideas for money:

Go to small business fairs in your community. Explain to them you're looking for sponsorship for an arts project. You will certainly get some "no"s, but small businesses can be incredibly generous. Put their name in your program as thanks, write them a thank you card, and boom, that's a sponsorship! And if you can't see them in person, look up your local chamber of commerce and send some emails. Less charm than in person, but you'll get something.

Set out a donation jar at your show. I got $60 just from doing this at my ONE PERFORMANCE! I donated it straight to the theatre, but this can be a great way to make money. Again, its hard to rely on other people's generosity, but you'd be surprised at how much people are willing to give when they care about something.

Another way to get donations are just to ask for PHYSICAL donations. Stuff. Paint, costumes, snacks, food, water, anything! Not a way to get money, but you'll have less you'll need to buy.

Again, fees. If you can, get a sponsor to pay any fees people can't, there's your financial aid. Parents are used to paying people to teach their kids for camps. It's pretty standard. Your price might be high, or it might be low. Mine was $25 dollars because I had enough money from my troop to not need them to pay much. But if you're running a massive show, you might need $100+ fees per kid. Change it however you need, but above all else, DO NOT LET IT BE A BARRIER FOR ENTRY. Poor kids deserve to love the arts, too.

How about cutting costs? Again, I spent about $250 for my entire camp. That's cheap. VERY cheap. How can you cut these costs?

Do a simple show. That's probably the best thing. I spent about $20 on set and costumes total. I did a show based in a school, so the kids just wore their own clothes. For the set, I got chairs and desks from the school I ran the camp in, and let the kids decorate them with paint pens and markers on poster board. It didn't look professional, but I didn't need it to. I just needed it to be functional and SPECIAL for the kids.

Get parents to donate snacks. Not much room for elaboration, but food is where most of my money spent went. If parents are able to donate snacks, you'll have less to spent.

If you are going to be serving meals, you can also set up a system of each day, a different kid's parent needs to provide the meals. Allow room for error here. Some parents cannot afford the materials to make that much food. This could be something you ask during sign up.

Get a location you don't need to rent or pay for in any capacity. I will discuss this more in the section about location.

If you need helpers, possibly recruit college students. Pay them if you can, but they would need less pay if you can arrange this as college credit for them.

Or high school theatre kids! Especially anyone in International Thespian Society. They can get points for helping! Pay them if you can, but again, there's another form of payment here.

Recruit anyone looking for volunteer hours. And trust me, with all the honor societies in high schools, there are plenty of high school kids who will absolutely help with a camp to check some hours off their list. And they can't accept payment.

Paying for something like this is a scary, scary task. I know. There are ways to get through it.

What show to do?

This depends on a lot. Small budget? Probably a one act based in a school or in modern times to lower prop nd costume costs. But the bigger your cast gets, the harder it is to do a one act. It's a balancing act.

There's a lot of (insert fairytale or other kids story here) The Musical Jr.s out there. Usually those are one acts, but you can do them with a bigger cast as they usually have quite a lot of characters. If that's not your style or doesn't fit your cast, I'd recommend finding a local theatre director and asking for help. There's a show out there for everyone.

I took a very nontraditional approach. I wrote my own show. To be fair, I was suited very well to this as an aspiring playwright and composer, but if you're not these things, you can still do it! Well, maybe not you yourself. This would be a time to rely on your community.

Finding a writer to take this on should be pretty easy. Find a way to contact a local high school English teacher. Trust me, they'd have at least a few students willing to write something. I'd pay them if you could, but many would be willing to do it for fun or school credit. I know I would have.

They could either write something original under whatever conditions you need for the show to work in your budget, or they could adapt a public domain story.

Finding a composer is a bit trickier, especially on a budget. But there's a good chance there's on at your high school or a local college if it offers the degree. Again, send an email or two. Compensate if you can, but I would've done this for free if my choir teacher came to me with this opportunity.

If you have a small cast of 9-12 year olds, my show, Marigold and the Friend who Did Not Sing, is free to use, as mentioned in the intro. It will be posted on my blog shortly after this post is made, with the script and all the music. It's a 15-20 minute one-act with seven characters. Marigold is upset that his best friend refuses to sing in a musical, so he tries to get him to sing however he can. Eventually he realizes that Niko doesn't have to sing if he doesn't want to.

Location??

There are so many options. Renting out a place is expensive, but if that's not possible for you, then there are other options.

Run an outdoor camp! Out of your backyard or the public park or something of that sort. Weather is an issue here. If you live somewhere where summers are REALLY hot or winters are REALLY cold, you'll have to run something in the fall or spring, when kids are in school. And there's always the possibility of being rained out. And there are lots of kids with outdoor allergies. For some people, however, this would be be the best (and cheapest) location. Provide sunscreen!

If you have cooperative roommates and/or family and enough space, you could use your house. Space for the audience could be tough, but if you needed a different place to perform, you could rent or find a place for just the performance(s).

A middle school or high school auditorium. This is what I did. If its a public school, you probably don't need to pay. However, I had to have a member of staff there at all times and I had to go through an approval process. This may be similar in other places. There's downsides but this was overall VERY worth it for me

How do I teach a show?

This was my biggest worry for the camp. I had only attempted to teach before. I had never directed a show before and I had never taught music before and I knew NOTHING about choreography. I also had never worked with kids before.

There are a few things you need to have people who can teach. Hopefully, you can do one or more of these. But again, at least get ONE other helper who can take over when you need. Two people can catch each other's slack.

Auditions: Here's my recommended audition schedule. Do more research or pull from your own auditions, but this worked really well for me.

Introductions. Get to know your students and their level of experience! And let them start to get to know each other, too. It's gonna be awkward for a while and that's okay.

Read through. Randomly assign everyone a part to read, including someone to read stage directions (could be you yourself doing that). This is just so everyone gets a sense of the show. Doesn't matter if they act it out well. This is just for basic stuff. Any song that comes up, let them know you're gonna play the track for it and no one needs to sing yet.

Character decisions. Give them some time to think about what character(s) they want to audition for. If anyone seems lost or confused, give them some help, especially any younger kids.

Singing auditions + dancing auditions (if applicable). For some shows, I recommend everyone do the singing audition. For others, I'd recommend doing it opt-in. And that also relates to the age of the kids and their experience. I did mine opt it with the only requirement being that if you were going for the character with a solo song or the main character (who had a lot of solo singing), you had to audition. If you weren't going for them you could still sing for your audition, but you weren't required to. About half my kids sang for me during the audition, and a few of them were SUPER shy, but by the show, I got them all to sing (except the kid playing Niko, of course. That goes against the whole point). You can do these solo with only you or a musical director, or they can be done in front of the group. It depends on a lot of things. Don't scare the kids off. Let them get comfortable before putting them on the spot in front of others. As for dancing auditions, I recommend you (or a choreographer) make a short 16 count simple dance to teach everyone. This could be something that could be incorporated into the show, or maybe not. Just to gauge how well they manage with basic (or more complex, depending on the show) dancing. Again, only do this if its needed.

Scene read throughs. Write down what everyone is auditioning for, and have them read through scenes, cycling through who wants to play who. I don't really know how to explain this further. It's the most basic part of theatre auditions. Have them read specific lines if you need, but do this until you have the characters set or have a good enough idea to sit and figure it out.

I'd also recommend not posting the cast list for everyone to see. Either pull them each aside before announcing everyone's parts, or send them home with the cast list. Let them process it alone for a minute.

Blocking/Choreo: I'd suggest, once you pick your show, get a script ASAP. Print it out, and make notes for every single scene as you envision it on a stage. Stage directions, business, props, possible costumes. Basically, get the mental blocking DOWN. If this isn't something you can do, find a director who is able to do this. For the songs, do the same thing. This may be a lot more involved due to counts and all. And same thing, if this isn't a thing you can do, find a choreographer.

Once you get to the actually blocking, set aside plenty of time to do this. A whole day for a full show, maybe half a day for a one act. It's boring and takes a long time. Kids will get bored. Get it over with ASAP. Do every scene and give them the directions you have written down. Then, run them through the scenes and make corrections as you need. Do the same with choreo, but I'd recommend, unless they come with a naturally very good sense of rhythm, to not teach choreo until they know the music.

Character work: You will likely have a vision for each character that isn't executed perfectly. That's normal. Work with them on it. Have them run certain lines in different ways. Work on how they portray their age and their walk and how they stand and talk, if that's something that you'd like to do. Work on making things feel natural on stage. This will be very hard for some things and that's okay. Guide them, stay patient, and be proud of them when they put the pieces together and get it right. This kind of thing is very hard to explain. If you are in theatre, you probably have a good understanding of character work, but you might not. I can answer any specific questions if you send them in.

Projecting work: Especially for new actors, this is NEEDED. Send one person to the back of the room. Have each person read a line of theirs, or a tongue twister, or something of the sort from the stage. Have the person in the back let them know if their projection and diction is good. They won't be perfect. But working on this will make them SO much better.

Music: I've been a musician much longer than I've been an actor and I did this very badly. I recommend singing along with them and working in small groups for songs. Remove harmonies if they can't do it. Have someone who can play at least a little bit of piano on your team to guide the singing. If it's not perfect, it's okay. As long as it's comprehensible and makes some sense. Reading music is hard. If they can't do it, try to explain some of the basics, but really, all they need to know is that up means higher and down means lower. If they learn the rhythms from you, they don't need to know how to read all of them. But it all depends on their age group and how much they know coming in and how confident you are at being able to teach them.

Teaching is hard. I made a lot of mistakes. But I figured things out in the end and so will you. Play videos! Bring in people to help last minute if need be. Don't be ashamed to ask for help.

Set and other tech stuff

Depending on where you perform (and what time) you might not need lighting and your sound system may just be a bluetooth speaker and an iPhone. But if you're in a theatre, I'd recommend getting a basic understanding of how to work the soundbooth.

I have no real advice to give you. I never did sound or light tech before this show. I just got some help and learned how to make it as simple as possible, with it only being a slider for the lights and one button for the music. My advice is this: find lighting techs and sound techs. Talk to the ones at local high schools or community theatre programs. I had one person come in before all this to help and I had to make three emergency phone calls because I didn't know what to do. That's fine. If you can get one to be there the whole camp and performance, that's awesome! But if you can't you will find a way. And if all else fails, do the show with the house lights on and a bluetooth speaker on stage connected to your phone or a computer. But y'know... avoid that if you can.

As for the set, there are a lot of layers to it. You can go all out and build an entire wooden set with platforms and changing parts and smoke machines etc. etc. Or you can put some chairs and a table on the stage and cover them with poster board you had the kids doodle on. It depends. Mostly on the age of the kids, the money, the location, and the time you have. Building a whole set usually takes up to a week of full work. You can't really do it in a home or public park. And buying that wood and paint and tools is expensive. It's also dangerous! Don't do something like this with younger kids. Either do it yourself or with a team ahead of time. At most, let them paint with heavy watch and with full coverings of their clothes. Maybe even buy them paint clothes. Paint will get everywhere. Especially with kids. It's like magic.

If you have kids 11-12 or up, then get a non-liability contract signed if you want to do something like this. They are capable, but it's still dangerous. I have a friend who's gotten two concussions doing theatre construction because things got dropped on her head. Heavy, wooden things. Don't set yourself up to get sued.

If you go the construction route, make a basic blueprint doodle and set aside maybe two weeks or time, or a few days less if you want your students to paint. Get some people who know what their doing, the paint colors you want, lots of screws and drills, any wood or other materials you need (make a friend with a pickup truck or van), and a lot of patience. After the show, set aside about 1 full day to deconstruct. Taking stuff apart is a lot easier than putting it together.

You can also always go simple. I got 6 chairs and an old desk and covered them in about $8 worth of colored and doodled poster board that I let the kids make themselves. You could have them paint set pieces if you buy them yourself. You could get a shelf or two and cover it with small objects or books. You can get fake plants and other non building required objects to "fill out" your set. If you want, you could involve the kids in this and ask them what they think. I can guarantee they probably have really good ideas.

Getting people to sign up

Google forms. Make a Google form asking all needed questions. It's so easy and you can send it out in a QR code or link.

Actually getting people to find it is the hard part. I'd recommend making some connections. I had my family post about it on their Facebook accounts so that parents in the area saw it. I also had my choir director post about it since she knows so many parents. Most of my sign ups came from her.

The more people you need, the earlier you should send out the sign up form. I only needed 6-7 people, and I had about 2 months of the form being out, and I barely made it. Take advantage of any connections you have. Print flyers and post them around if you can. Talk to your friends and find out of they know anyone who'd be interested. Do it as early as you can, and you will be able to get the sign ups you need.

Include the price and financial aid options in the sign up. And the show. And the cast number. And when you will stop sign ups. Any information that you've got, put it on the form.

Final thoughts

You've got this. This is not an easy thing to pull off when you aren't experienced. But its worth it. I grew to love the kids I worked with. It was one of the best experiences of my life, and I wouldn't trained what I learned about theatre and about myself for the world.

My musical is free to use, and if it works for you, please use it. The PDF and the music will be in a separate post on my account.

#theatre #musicals #broadway #theater #musical theatre #playwright #guide #summer camp #idk how tags work

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