Camp Broadway Collection launches with 5 shows—and life skills to teach
Growing up outside Columbus, Ohio, Daniel Robey was a summer camp kid.
Church camp. Scout camp. Scout camp counselor. Program director. He even taught scout leaders to lead camps.
Starting in middle school, the camp kid was also a theater kid. He now teaches high school theater in Worthington, Ohio.
Take any town camp or church camp or make-fire-with-sticks camp and add theater, he says, and you’ve got something special.
“There are so many leadership skills that theater can teach, problem-solving skills that go really nicely with what's happening at a summer camp,” he says. “The art of theater is inherently a group project and a team sport and requires leadership and setting the example.”
Who better than Robey—with his feet firmly in the theater and camp worlds—to help shape Camp Broadway MyWay, a new program that makes it easy for camp directors to add theater to their programming? (Details at campbwaymyway.com.)
Introducing The Camp Broadway Collection
The Camp Broadway Collection has step-by-step instructions to introduce elementary and middle-school campers to theater, through five classic Broadway shows: “Annie,” “Shrek,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” “Guys and Dolls,” and “Seussical.”
In as little as five days, campers can stage a distilled, 20-minute musical with sets, costumes, music, and choreography, coupled with a character-education curriculum that emphasizes life skills.
Camp directors who may not know an overture from a curtain call have access to digital materials, from how to stage musical numbers to how to teach fourth-graders harmony (thanks to the Harmony Helper app.) There are glossaries, timelines, set designs and costume ideas, and step-by-step instructions and videos on how to teach choreography.
Robey says it’s a game-changer.
“I've never seen a script like this with so much support, with an amazing title geared for this age group or short time span,” he says. “It just aligns with so many goals of so many youth-facing programs.”
It also encourages differentiation. When Robey staged his pilot production of “Guys and Dolls” for grades three through eight last summer, he had 45 students acting and a dozen older students, in grades six through eight, who concentrated on the technical departments, including painting sets on huge sheets of Lowe’s cardboard.
Theater (And Character Education) In A Digital Box
The Camp Broadway Collection is the brainchild of Susan Lee, founder of Broadway Education Alliance (BEA). Camp Broadway is Broadway’s original musical-theater camp, a 30-year arts-enrichment program with direct access to Broadway’s top talent, the only camp experience to be honored by the Drama Desk.
“Our goal is to make this program affordable and accessible, with authoritative materials that really speak to the quality that Broadway brings,” Lee says. “Camp directors told us they want access to authoritative materials and access to experts.”
Theo Lencicki, BEA’s artistic director, says the project has been in the works for several years and is designed to take intimidation out of staging a show.
“Often, the staff for after-school or traditional summer-camp programs don't know where to begin. They have staff who know sports and outdoor camp activities, but not theater. To present the Camp Broadway MyWay package, you don't need a theater expert on staff. We provided the experts for you.”
The lesson plans are stratified. Veteran directors can use the bare-bones plan. Less-seasoned directors will find one with more suggestions. First-time directors can use the plan with minute-by-minute breakdowns.
“We have literally gone through three different iterations of how the curriculum can be presented and taught for any type of individual who is taking on this program to be less intimidating,” Lencicki says.
“You’re Not Expected To Use Everything”
The Camp Broadway MyWay musicals have been put through their paces.
Carolyn Daniels, the program director of the Meriden-New Britain-Berlin YMCA in Meriden, Conn., has staged three pilot productions: “Annie” in 2024, and “Shrek” and “Seussical” in 2025.
“Everything is there, but you're not expected to use everything,” Daniels says. “The most important thing, and I think this is where Camp Broadway MyWay really works, is it's giving you the opportunity just to start.”
It's not about the show, she says.
“It's about the child's journey through the show. Who do they start out as at the beginning, and who do they end up as at the end? Because I'm trying to build kids who are great kids.”
Daniels wants her actors to develop their characters on stage, but more important is how they’re developing their personal character.
“Have they learned something about themselves? Have they learned something about working with other people? That's really what it's all about is building a really great kid.”
It's not, she says, about the bells and whistles.
“Bells and whistles are great. Parents love them, but they love their child more. And they want to see their child do something that they didn't think they could do. And I think that's what is so unique about Camp Broadway MyWay.”
Adding To An Existing Camp
When Peter Romagna was growing up in Burlington, Mass., the Parks and Rec Department offered summer sports and crafts but no outlet for theater kids like him. In 2024, he piloted a Camp Broadway MyWay production of “Guys and Dolls” in a converted Burlington barn.
“We were able to implement the program into the already existing camp, and it was great,” Romagna says. The cast bonded over the show, but just as much over writing their bios or thinking about what they had in their own closets that might work for costumes.
Then there was the nervous little girl who showed up with her mother on the first day of camp. Five days later, she had been in her first show and delivered a solo line, proud as can be.
“You do not have to be a Broadway star,” Romagna says. “You don't even need to want to be a Broadway star. It's for everybody that wants to put on a production, that wants to work as a team and to be part of something bigger.”
Educating Kids Where They Are
To produce a musical requires performance rights, granted by companies such as Music Theatre International, the rights holder for the collection’s musicals.
John Prignano, MTI’s COO and director of education and development, agrees with Daniels.
“Camp Broadway MyWay does not focus on performance,” he says. “The performance is really secondary to what they learn in the process. You learn about collaboration, you learn about empathy, you learn about working as a team, you understand why every person in the process is important. And ultimately, at the end, there is a short performance.”
Prignano is impressed.
“The platform they created for the educational side of this is astounding to me,” he says. “It's beautiful, it's intuitive, there's more information than I thought anyone could ever find on these shows or how to do these shows.”
It would take weeks to go through the entire program, which any camp is welcome to do, but the strength of the collection, Prignano says, is why it’s called “MyWay.”
“Depending on what you have in your group, what they're interested in, what their talents are, you can really customize it for that group,” he says. “It's not fitting them into a mold. It's finding out who they are and then customizing it and taking what's necessary from what Camp Broadway provides and then using that to educate those kids on where they are and the level they're at, not fitting them into a box.”
Ready To Make Memories
Lencicki, the BEA artistic director, is out to make memories.
“We want to give them a program where they can have an experience that's so meaningful that 15, 20, 30 years from now, they are talking about it and referencing it because it affected them deeply,” he says.
Robey, the former camp and theater kid who glows when he talks about the Camp Broadway Collection, has signed on to stage “Shrek” outdoors at a scout camp in western New York this summer.
“I wish it was around when I was the program director at my summer camp,” he says. “Those campfires would be so much better for it.”
