StageDoor Manor

  I want you to close your eyes and imagine a place where every one loves theater.  A place where children singing at the top of their lungs down the hallways to “Guys and Dolls” and “Wicked” is a normal site. Where the sacrifice of sucking on garlic all day to save your throat for rehearsals is excepted as necessary and where you live, breath, talk, learn and even sleep theatre. If you truly look at yourself as a dedicated and true actor, this place I've just described to you probably made your heart race, your pulse quicken and sent your hands reaching out to clasp at this fairy tale world. But what if I told you that it wasn't a fairy tale, that you could go and have every thing that I just told you about? Well, if you are ages 8 to 18, there is a place hidden away in Loch Sheldrake in NY about 2 hours from the Big Apple, that is devoted to the things that I have just painted to you.  Many people are just sad that the place is only for teens and not adults.
The Summer Camp Stagedoor Manor was founded in 1975 by Carl and Elsie Samuleson a couple determined to invent a theatre friendly camp for children.  Their daughter Cindy now runs the camp. Samuleson says that “ Every place they (the kids) turn, every body knows what they are talking about. When they go around singing, people don't look at them and go, “Why are you doing that?” All involved are doing the same thing you are.  At the beginning of each summer (the summer is split up into 3, 21 day sections) the campers have auditions and the camping directors take two days to cast for the shows.  Then the young actors have 19 days of rehearsals to prepare for the end show. The camp puts on 36 full scale shows by the end of the summer making it a staggering 12 productions per splint.  A regular day at stagedoor consists of up to three rehearsals a day interspersed with classes and recreation. Up to 270 campers now come every session with 155 camp directors, faculty and chaperons.

 The popularity of the camp has gone up since several alumni actors and actresses have come out of the camping experience. Robert Downey Jr., Mandy Moore, Natalie Portman, and Lea Michele are among the many who have made it big.  The camp is now usually crawling with casting directors and agents looking for new faces and natural talent.  Due to this, the price of the camp has sky rocketed and now its a little harder to get into it then it was when it was first opened. Now its a staggering $6,000 for a single session.  But despite the price and the location a now famous contemporary play write from Sheldrake, Jonathan Sherman states, “ My experience at Stagedoor Manor was, simply put, life changing.  It was the first place out side of the actual house I grew up in where I felt at home in the world.  Popularity wasn’t based on cosmetic appearances or athletic abilities or bank accounts or anything but talent and humor and intelligence... So I pretty much blame Stagedoor and Sondheim for most of the good things in my life!”      -Sara Furmato